Chapter 1. Nightmare

Tandy tried to sleep, but it was difficult Thedemon had never actually entered her private bedroom, butshe was afraid that one night he would. This night she wasalone; therefore she worried.

Her father Crombie was a rough soldier who had notruck with demons. But he was away most of the time,guarding the King at Castle Roogna. Crombie was funwhen he was home, but that was rare. He claimed to hatewomen, but had married a nymph, and tolerated no inter-ference by other males. Tandy remained a child in his eyes;

his hand would have hovered ominously near his sword ifhe even suspected any demon was bothering her. If only hewere here.

Her mother Jewel was on a late mission, planting orangesapphires in a stratum near the surface. It was a long wayaway, so she rode the Diggle-worm, who could tunnelthrough rock without leaving a hole. They would be backafter midnight. That meant several more hours, and Tandywas afraid.

She turned over, wrapped the candy-striped sheet abouther in an uncomfortable tangle, and put the pink pillowover her head. It didn't help; she still feared the demon.His name was Fiant, and he could dematerialize at will.That meant he could walk through walls.

The more Tandy thought about that, the less she trustedthe walls of her room. She was afraid that any unwatchedwall would permit the demon to pass through. She rolledover, sat up, and peered at the walls. No demon.

2                      Ogre, Ogre

She had met Fiant only a few Weeks ago, by accident.She had been playing with some large, round, blue rubies,rejects from her mother's barrel—rubies were supposed tobe red—and one had rolled down a passage near the de-mons' rum works. She had run right into a rum wrap ademon was using, tearing it so that it became a bum wrap.She had been afraid the demon would be angry, but insteadhe had simply looked at her with a half-secret half-smile—and that had been worse. Thereafter that demon had shownup with disturbing frequency, always looking at her as ifsomething demoniacally special was on his mind. She wasnot so naive as to be in doubt about the nature of histhought. A nymph would have been flattered—but Tandywas human. She sought no demon lover.

Tandy got up and went to the mirror. The magic lanternbrightened as she approached, so that she could see herself.She was nineteen years old, but she looked like a child inher nightie and lady-slippers, her brown tresses mussedfrom constant squirming, her blue eyes peering out wor-riedly. She wished she looked more like her mother—but ofcourse no human person could match the pretty faces andfantastic figures of nymphs. That was what nymphdomwas all about—to attract men like Crombie who judged thedistaff to be good for only one thing. Nymphs were goodfor that thing. Human girls could be good for it, too, butthey really had to work at it; they fouled it up by assigningfar more meaning to it than the nymphs did, so wereunable to proceed with sheer delighted abandon. They werecursed by their awareness of consequence.

She peered more closely at herself, brushing her tressesback with her hands, rearranging her nightie, standingstraighten She was no child, whatever her famer mightchoose to think. Yet she was not exactly buxom, either.Her human heritage had given her a good mind and a soul,at the expense of voluptuousness. She had a cute face, witha pert, upturned nose and full lips, she decided, but notenough of the rest of it. She couldn't make it as a nymph.

The demon Fiant obviously thought she would do, how-ever. Maybe he didn't realize that her human componentmade her less of a good thing. Maybe he was slumming,looking for an intriguing change of pace from the duskydemonesses who could assume any form they chose, even

Ogre, Ogre                      3

animal forms. It was said that sometimes they wouldchange to animal form in the middle of the act of—but nohuman girl was supposed to be able to imagine anythinglike that. Tandy couldn't change form, in or out of bed,and certainly she didn't want any demon's attention. Ifonly she could convince him of that!

There was nothing to do but try to sleep again. The de-mon would come or he wouldn't; since she had no controlover that, there was no sense worrying.

She lay down amidst the mess her bed had become andworried. She closed her eyes and remained still, as if sleep-ing, but remained tensely awake. Maybe after a while herbody would be fooled into relaxing.

There was a flicker at the far wan. Tandy spied itthrough almost-closed eyes and kept her small body frozen.It was the demon; he really had come.

In a moment Fiant solidified inside the room. He waslarge, muscular, and fat, with squat horns sprouting fromhis forehead and a short, unkempt beard that made himlook like a goat. His hind feet were hooflike, and he had amedium-length tail at his posterior, barbed at the tip. ThereWas a dusky ambience about him that would have betrayedhis demonic nature, no matter what form he took. His eyeswere like smoky quartz shielding an internal lava flow,emitting a dull red light that brightened when his attentionwarmed to something. By diabolic standards, he was hand-some enough, and many a nymph would have been deli-riously happy to be in Tandy's place.

Tandy hoped Fiant would go away, after perceiving heralseep and disordered, but knew he wouldn't. He found herattractive, or at least available, and refused to be repulsedby her negative response. Demons expected rejections; theythrived on them. It was said that, given a choice betweenrape and seduction, they would always choose the rape.The females, too. Of course, it was impossible to rape thatkind; she would simply dematerialize if she didn't like itWhich might be another explanation for Fiant's interest inTandy; she couldn't dematerialize. Rape was possible.

Maybe if she were positive, welcoming him, that wouldturn him off. He was obviously tired of willing females.But Tandy couldn't bring herself to try that particularploy. If it didn't work, where would she be?

4                      Ogre, Ogro

Fiant approached the bed, grinning evilly. Tandy kepther eyes screwed almost shut What would she do if hetouched her? She was sure that screaming and fightingwould only encourage him and make his eyes glow withpreternatural lust—but what else was there?

Fiant paused, looming over her, his paunch protruding,the light from his eyes spearing down through slits. "Ah,you lovely little morsel," he murmured, a wisp of smokecurling from his mouth as he spoke. "Be thrilled, you soft,human flesh. Your demon lover is here at last! Let me seemore of you." And he snatched the sheet away.

Tandy hurled the pillow at him and bounced off thebed, her terror converting to anger. "Get out of here, foulspiriti" she screamed.

"Ah, the tender morsel wakes, cries welcome! Delight-ful!" The demon strode toward her, the blue tip of hisforked tongue rasping over his thin lips. His tail flickedsimilarly.

Tandy backed away, her terror/anger intensifying. "Iloathe you! Go away!"

"Presently," Fiant said, his tail stiffening as it elevated."Hone your passion to its height, honey, for I will possessits depth." He reached for her, his horns brightening in thereflected glare of his eyes.

Desperate, Tandy wreaked her ultimate. She threw atantrum. Her body stiffened, her face turned red, her eyesclenched shut, and she hurled that tantrum right at thedemon's fat chest.

It struck with explosive impact. The demon sunderedinto fragments, his feet, hands, and head flying outward.His tail landed on the bed and lay twitching like a be-headed snake.

Tandy chewed her trembling lip. She really hadn'twanted to do that; her tantrums were devastating, and shewasn't supposed to throw them. Now she had destroyed thedemon, and there would be hell to pay. How could sheanswer to hell for murder?

The pieces of the demon dissolved into smoke. Thecloud coalesced—and Fiant formed again, intact. Helooked dazed. "Oh, that kiss was a beauty," he said, andstaggered through the walL

Tandy relaxed. Fiant wasn't dead after all, but he was

Ogre, Ogre                       5

gone. She had the best of both situations. Or did she? Hesurely would not stay gone—and now they both knew hertantrums would not stop him. She had only postponedher problem.

Nevertheless, now she was able to sleep. She knew therewould be no more trouble this night, and her mother wouldbe home the next few nights. Fiant, for all his boldnesswhen he had his victim isolated, stayed clear when a re-sponsible person was in the neighborhood.

Next day Tandy tried to talk to her mother, though shewas pretty sure it wouldn't help. "Mother, you know thatdemon Fiant, who works at the rum refinery? He—"

"Oh, yes, the demons are such nice people," Jewel said,smelling of mildly toasted sulfur. That was her magic: herodor reflected her mood. "Especially Beauregard, doing hisresearch paper—"

"Which he has been working on since before I was bom.He's a nice demon, yes. But Fiant is another kind. He—"

"They never make any trouble for me when I have to setgems in their caves. The demons are such good neighbors."The sulfur was getting stronger, beginning to crinkle thenose; Jewel didn't like to hear criticisms.         »

"Most are. Mother." Naturally the demons didn't botherJewel; without her, there would be no gems to find, andthe demons were partial to such trinkets. "But this one'sdifferent. He—"

"Everyone's different, of course, dear. That's whatmakes Xanth so interesting." Now she smelled of freshlyblooming orange roses.

"Maybe different isn't quite what I mean. He comes tomy room at night—"

"Oh, he wouldn't do that! That wouldn't be right." Thewrongness of such a thing showed in the smell of an over-ripe medicine ball; even immature medicine balls smelledunpleasantly of illness, and aging intensified the effect"But he did\ Last night—"

"You must have dreamed it, dear," Jewel said firmly.And the aroma of carrion of a moderately sated dragonshowed how distasteful any such notion was to Jewel."Sometimes those nightmares carry irresponsible dreams."

Tandy saw that her mother did not want to becomeaware of the truth. Jewel had been a nymph and retained

6                       Ogre, Ogre

many of her nymphal qualities despite the burden of expe-rience that marriage and motherhood had imposed on her.She had no real understanding of evil. To her, all peopleand all creatures were basically good neighbors, includingdemons. And in truth, the demons had been tolerably wellbehaved, until Fiant had taken his interest in Tandy.

Her father Crombie would understand, though. Crombiewas not only human, he was a man of war. Well did heunderstand the ways of males. But he hardly ever had timeoff, and she had no way to advise him of her situation, sohe couldn't help now.

As she thought of her father, Tandy abruptly realizedthat Jewel could not afford to lose her faith in people, be-cause then she would have to question Crombie's fidelity.That could only disrupt her life. Evidently Jewel's thoughtswere to some extent parallel to Tandy's because now therewas the disturbing odor of a burning field of wild oats.

So Tandy couldn't actually talk to her mother about this.It would have to be her father, in private. That meant shehad to get to him, since he would not be home in time todeal with the demon. It was said that no man could standagainst a demon in combat, but Crombie was more than aman: he was her father. She had to reach him.

That was a problem in itself. Tandy had never been toCastle Roogna. She had never even been to the surface ofXanth. She would be lost in an instant if she ever left thecaves. In fact, she was afraid to try. How could she travelall the way to her father's place of employment, alone? Shehad no good answer.

The demon did not come the following night. The night-mares visited instead. Every time she slept, they trotted in,rearing over her bed, hooves flashing, ears fiat back, snort-ing the scary vapors that were the bad dreams they bore.She woke in justified terror, and they were gone—only toreturn as she slept again. That was the way of such beasts.

Finally she became so desperate she threw a tantrum atone of them. The tantrum struck it on the flank. The maresquealed with startled pain, her hindsection collapsing, andher companions fled.

Tandy was instantly sorry, as she generally was afterthrowing a tantrum; she knew the dark horse was onlydoing its duty and should not be punished. Tandy woke

Ogre, Ogre                       7

completely, tears in her eyes, determined to help the ani-mal—but of course it was gone. It was almost impossible tocatch a nightmare while awake.

She checked where the mare had stood. The floor wasscuffled there, and there were a few drops of blood. Tandyhoped the mare had made it safely home; it would be sev-eral nights before this one was fit for dream-duty again. Itwas a terrible thing to lash out at an innocent creature likethat, no matter how bothersome it might be, and Tandyresolved not to do that again.

Next time she slept, she watched for the nightmares,trying to identify the one she had hurt. But they were along time in coming, as if they were now afraid of her, andshe could hardly blame them for that. But at last theycame, for they were compelled to do their job even when itwas dangerous to them. Timidly they approached withtheir burdens of dreams, and these now related to theharming of equines. They were making her pay for hercrime! But she never saw the hurt one, and that made herfeel increasingly guilty. She was sure that particular night-mare was forever wary of her, and would not come again.Maybe it was lying in a stall wherever such creatures wentby day, suffering. If only she had held her temper!

It was the job of nightmares to carry the unpleasantdreams that sleepers were scheduled to have, just as it wasJewel's job to place the gems people were destined to find.Since the dreams were ugly, they could not be trusted tovoluntary participation. Thus nightmares had a bad reputa-tion, in contrast with the invisible daymares who brought inpleasant daydreams. People tried to avoid nightmares, andthis made the horses' job more difficult. Tandy wasn't surewhat would happen if the bad dreams did not get delivered,but was sure there would be trouble. It was generally bestnot to interfere with the natural order. She wondered idlywhat dreams the nightmares themselves had when theyslept.

A few days later, when Tandy was settling down, thedemon Fiant came again. He walked right through thewall, a lascivious grin on his face. "Open up, cutie; I'mhere to fulfill your fondest fancies and delve into your deep-est desires." His tail was standing straight up, quivering.

For a moment Tandy froze, unable even to speak. She

8       .              Ogre, Ogre

had been bothered by this creature before; now she wasterrified. Staring-eyed, she watched his confident ap-proach.

Fiant stood over her, as before, his eyes glowing like redstars. "Lie back, spread out, make yourself comfy," hegloated. "I shall exercise your extreme expectations." Hereached for her with a long-nailed diabolic hand.

Tandy screamed.

This night, Jewel was home; she rushed in to discoverwhat was the matter. But the demon marched calmly outthrough the wall before Jewel arrived, and Tandy had toblame her scream on the nightmares. That provided herwith a fresh burden of guilt, for of course the mares were

innocent.

Tandy knew she had to do something. Plant was gettingbolder, and soon he would catch her alone—and that wouldbe worse than any nightmare. He had proved he could sur-vive one of her tantrums, so Tandy had no protection. Shewould have to go to her father Crombie—soon. But how?

Then she had an inspiration. Why not catch a nightmareand ride her to Castle Roogna? The creature would surelyknow the way, as the mares had the addresses of all people

who slept.

But there were problems. Tandy had no experience rid-ing horses; she had sometimes ridden the Diggle behind hermother, traveling to the far reaches of Xanth to place em-eralds and opals and diamonds, but this was different. TheDiggle moved slowly and evenly, phasing through the rockas long as someone made a tune it liked. The nightmares,she was sure, moved swiftly and unevenly. How could shecatch one—and how could she hold on?

Tandy was an agile girl. She had climbed all over thecaverns, swinging across chasms on rope-vines, squeezingthrough tiny crevices—good thing she was small!—swimming the chill river channels, running fleetly acrosssloping rockslides, throwing chunks at the occasional gob-lins who pursued her. If a nightmare got close enough, shewas confident she could leap onto its back and hang on toits flowing mane. It would not be a comfortable ride, butshe could manage. So all she really had to worry about wasthe first step—catching her mare.

The problem was, the nightmares came only during a

Ogre, Ogre                       9

person's sleep. She might pretend sleep, but she doubtedshe would fool them—and if she grabbed one while awake,it would surely dissipate like demon-smoke, leaving herwith nothing but a fading memory. Nightmares were, afterall, a type of demon; they could dematerialize in much theway Fiant did. That was how they passed through walls toreach the most secure sleepers. In fact, she suspected theybecame material only in the presence of a sleeper.

She would have to ride the nightmare in her sleep. Onlythat would keep it material, or enable her to dematerializewith it.

Tandy set about her task with determination. It was notthat she relished the prospect of such a ride, but that sheknew what would happen to her at the hands—or what-ever—of the demon if she did not ride. She set up a bolsteron two chairs, and practiced on it, pretending it was theback of a horse. She lay on her bed, then abruptly bouncedoff it and leaped astride the bolster, - grabbing a tasslewhere the mane should be and squeezing with her legs.Over and over she did this, drilling the procedure into her-self until it became fast and automatic. She got tired andher legs got sore, but she kept on, until she could do it inher sleep—she hoped.

This took several days. She practiced mostly when hermother was out setting jewels, so that there would be noawkward questions. The demon did not bother her by day,fortunately, so she was able to snatch some sleep then, too.

When she was satisfied, and also when she dared delayno longer, because of Fiant's boldness and her mother's up-coming overnight journey to set diamonds in a big kimber-lite pipe—a complex job—she acted.

She wrote a note to her mother, explaining that she hadgone to visit her father and not to worry. Nymphs tendednot to worry much anyway, so it should be all right. Shegathered some sleeping pills from the recesses where theyslept, put them in her pockets, and lay down. One pill wasnormally good for several hours before it woke, and shehad several; they should keep her in their joint sleep allnight.

But as the power of the pills took then- magic effect onher body, drawing her into their slumber, Tandy had analarming thought: suppose no nightmares came tonight?

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Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

II

Suppose Fiant came instead—and she was locked in slum-ber, unable to resist him? That thought disturbed her somuch that the first nightmare rushed to attend to her the

moment she slept.

Tandy saw the creature clearly in her dream: amidnight-colored equine with faintly glowing eyes—therewas the demon stigma!—set amidst a flaring forelock. Themane was glossy black, and the tail dark ebony; even thehooves were dusky. Yet she was a handsome animal, withfine features and good musculature. The black ears perkedforward, the black nostrils flared, and the dark neckarched splendidly. Tandy knew this was an excellent repre-sentative of the species.

"I'm asleep," she reminded herself. "This is a dream."Indeed it was. A bad dream, full of deep undertow currentsand grotesque surgings and fear and shame and horror,making her miserable. But she fought it back, nerved herself,

and leaped for the dark horse.

She made it. Her tedious rehearsals had served her well.She landed on the nightmare's back, clutched the sleekmane, and clasped its powerful body with her legs.

For an instant the mare stood still, too surprised tomove. Tandy knew that feeling. Then the creature tookoff. She galloped through the wall as if it were nothing—and indeed it felt like nothing, for they had dematerialized.The power of the nightmare extended to her rider, just asthe sleeping power of the pills extended to their wearer.Tandy remained asleep, in the dream-state, fastened to her

steed.

The ride was a terror. Walls shot by like shadows, andopen spaces like daylight, as the mare galloped headlongand tailshort. Tandy hung on to the mane, though thestrands of it cut cruelly into her hands, because she wasafraid to let go. How hard would she fall, where would shebe, if she lost purchase now? This was a worse dream thanany before—and the sleeping pills prevented her from wak-ing.

They were already far away from her mother's neat

apartment. They cruised through rock and caverns, waterand fire, and the lairs of large and small monsters. Theygalloped across the table where'six demons were playing

poker, and the demons paused a moment as if experiencingsome chill doubt without quite seeing the nightmare. Theyzoomed by a secret conclave of goblins planning foul play,and these, too, hesitated momentarily as the ambience ofbad visions touched them. The nightmare plowed throughthe deepest recess, where the Brain Coral stored the livingartifacts of Xanth, and the artifacts stirred restlessly, too,not knowing what moved them. Tandy realized that when anightmare passed a waking creature, she caused a brief badthought. Only in sleep did those thoughts have full potency.

Now Tandy had another problem. She had to guide thissteed—and she didn't know how. If she had known how,she still wouldn't have known the way to Castle Roogna.Why hadn't she thought of this before?

Well, this was a dream, and it didn't have to make sense."Take me to Castle Roognal" she cried. "Then I'll let yougo!"

The nightmare neighed and changed course. Was that allthere was to it? It occurred to Tandy that the steed was asfrightened as Tandy herself was. Such horses weren'tmeant for riding! So maybe the mare would cooperate, justto be rid of her rider.

They burst out of the caverns and onto the upper surfaceof Xanth. Tandy was used to strange things in dreams, butwas nevertheless awed. Her eyes were open—at least theyseemed to be, though this could be merely part of thedream—and she saw the vastness of the surface night.There were spreading trees and huge empty spaces and riv-ers without cave-canyons, and above was a monstrous ceil-ing full of pinpoints of light in great patches. She realizedthat these were stars, which her father had told herabout—and she had thought he was making it up, just ashe made up tales of the heroic deeds of the men of legend-ary Xanth's past—and that where there were none was be-cause of clouds. Clouds were like the vapor surroundingwaterfalls, loosed to ascend to the heavens. Turn a cloudloose, and naturally it did whatever it wanted.

Then from behind, a cloud came a much larger light,surely the fabled sun, the golden ball that tracked acrossthe sky, always in one direction. No, not the sun, for thatchose to travel, for reasons of its own, only during the day.

12

Ogre, Ogre

Jewel had told her that, though Tandy wasn't sure Jewelherself had ever seen the sun. When Tandy had asked herfather whether it was true, Crombie had just laughed,which she took to be affirmation of the orb's diurnal dispo-sition. Of course things didn't need sensible reasons forwhat they did. Maybe the sun was merely afraid of thedark, so stayed clear of night

No, this must be the moon, which was an object of simi-lar size but dimmer because it was made of green cheesethat didn't glow so well. Evidently, high-flying dragons hadeaten most of it, for only a crescent remained, the merest

rind. Still, it was impressive.

The mare pounded on. Tandy's hands grew numb, buther hold was firm. Her body was bruised and chafed bythe bouncing; she would be sore for daysl But at least shewas getting there. Her bad dream slipped into oblivion fora while, as dreams tended to, fading in and out as me run

continued.Abruptly she woke. A dark castle loomed in the fading

moonlight. They had arrivedl

Barely in time, too, for now dawn was looming behindthem. The nightmare could not enter the light of day. Infact, the mare was already fading out, for regardless of .dawn, it was no longer bound when Tandy left the dream-state. The sleeping pills must have finished their nap, andTandy had finished hers with them. No—the stones weremostly gone; they must have bounced out one at a time inthe course of the rough ride, and now only one was left,

not enough to do the job.

In a moment the mare vanished entirely, freed by cir-cumstance, and Tandy found herself sprawled on the

ground, battered and wide-eyed.

She was stiff and sore and tired. It had not been a rest-ful sleep at all. Her legs felt swollen and numb from thighto ankle. Her hair was plastered to her scalp with the coldsweat of nocturnal fear. It had been a horrendous ordeal.But at least she was in sight of her destination.

She got painfully to her feet and staggered toward theedifice as the blinding sun hefted itself ambitiously abovethe trees. The Land of Xanth brightened about her, and thecreatures of day began to stir. Dew sparkled. It was allstrangely pretty.

Ogre, Ogre                      13

But as she came to the moat and saw that there was thestirring of some awful creature within it, orienting on her,she had a horrible revelation. She knew what CastleRoogna looked like, from descriptions her father had made.He had told her wonderful stories about it, from the timeshe was a baby onward, about the orchard with its cherry-bomb trees, bearing cherries a person dared not eat, andshoes of all types growing on shoe trees, and all manner ofother wonders too exaggerated to be believed. Only an idiotor a hopeless visionary would believe in the Land of Xanth,anyway! Yet she almost knew the individual monsters ofthe moat by name, and the same for the guardian zombieswho rested in the graveyard, awaiting the day when Xanthneeded defense. She knew the spires and turrets and all,and the ghosts who dwelt within them. She had a marvel-ously detailed mental map of Castle Roogna—and this pres-ent castle did not conform.This was the wrong castle.

Oh, woe! Tandy stood in dull, defeated amazement. Allher effort, her last vestige of strength and hope, and herdeviously laid plans to reach her father lay in ruins. Whatwas she to do now? She was lost in Xanth, without food orwater, so tired she could hardly move, with no way to re-turn home. What would her mother think?

Something stirred within the castle. The drawbridge low-ered, coming to rest across the small moat. A lovely womanwalked out of the castle, subduing the reaching monsterwith a trifling gesture of her hand, her voluminous robeblowing in the morning breeze. She saw Tandy and cametoward her—and Tandy ,saw with a new shock of horrorthat the woman had no face. Her hood contained a writh-ing mass of snakes, and emptiness where human featuresshould have been. Surely the nightmare had saved theworst dream for last!

"Dear child," the faceless woman said. "Come with me.We have been expecting you."

Tandy stood frozen, unable even to muster the energyfor a tantrum. What horrors lay within this dread castle?"It is all right," the snake-headed woman said reassur-ingly. "We consider that your phenomenal effort in catch-ing and riding the nightmare constitutes sufficient chal-

14                    Os1'®' "S""®lenge to reach this castle. You will not be subject to the

usual riddles of admission."                  ,They were going to take her inside! Tandy tried to run,but her strength was gone. She was a spunky girl, but shehad been through too much this night. She fainted.

Chapter 2. Smash Ogre

Smash tromped through the blackboard jungleof Xanth, looking at the pictures on the blackboards be-cause, like all his kind, he couldn't read the words. He wasin a hurry because the foul weather he was enjoyingshowed signs of abating, and he wanted to get where bewas going before it did. When he encountered a fallenbeech tree across the path, he simply hurled it out of theway, letting the beech-sand fall in a minor sandstorm.When he discovered that an errant river had jumped itschannel and was washing out the path and threatening toclean the grunge off his feet and make his toenails visiblefor the first time in weeks, he grabbed that stream by itstail and flexed it so hard that it splatted right back into itsproper channel and lay there quivering and bubbling infear. When an omery bullhorn blocked the way, threaten-ing to ram its horn most awkwardly into the posterior ofanyone who distracted it. Smash did more than that. Hepicked it up by the hom and blew a horrendous blast thatnearly turned the creature inside out. Never again wouldthat bullhorn bother travelers on that path; it had beencowed.

This sort of thing was routine for Smash, for he was themost powerful and stupid of all Xanth's vaguely manlikecreatures. The ground trembled nervously when hetromped, and the most ferocious monsters thought it pru-dent to catch errands elsewhere until he was gone. Natu-rally the errands fled with indecent haste, wanting no partof this. In fact, no creature with any wit at all wanted anypart of this. For Smash was an ogre.

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Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

17

He was twice the height of an ordinary man, was broadin proportion, and his knots of hairy muscles stood out likethe boles of tormented old trees. Some creatures mighthave considered him ugly, but these were the less imagina-tive individuals. Smash was not ugly; he was horrendous.By no stretch of imagination could any ogre be consideredless than grotesque, and Smash was an appalling specimenof the breed. There had not been a more revolting creatureon this path since a basilisk had crossed it

Yet Smash, like most powerfully ugly creatures, had arather sweet interior, hidden deep inside where it wouldnot embarrass him. He had been raised among humanbeings, had gone on an adventure with Prince Dor andPrincess Irene, and had made friends with centaurs. Hehad, in short, been somewhat civilized by his environment,incredible as this might seem. Most people believed that noogre was dvilizable, and that was certainly the safest beliefto hold.

Yet Smash was no ordinary ogre. This meant that heusually did not strike without some faint reason and thathis natural passion for violence had been somewhat stifled.This was a sad condition for an ogre, yet he had borne upmoderately well. Now he had a mission.

The bad weather cleared. The clouds drew their curtainsaside to let lovely shafts of sunlight slant down, making theair sparkle prettily. Birds shook out their feathers andtrilled joyfully. Everything was turning clean and pleasant.

Smash snorted with disgust. How could he travel in this?He would have to camp for the afternoon and night andhope the morrow was a worse day.

He was hungry, for it took huge and wasteful quantitiesof energy to sustain an ogre in proper arrogance. He castabout for something edible and massive enough to sustainhim, such as a dead dragon or a vat of spoiling applesauceor a mossy rock-candy boulder, but found nothing. Thisregion had already been scavenged out.

Then he heard the squawk of a contented griffin and hesniffed the aroma of delicious pie. The perceptions of ogreswere a-cute rather than a-ugly, oddly; though the griffinwas some distance away, Smash located it precisely bysound and odor. He tromped toward it. This must be thecreature that had cleaned out all the edibles of this region.

The griffin had captured a monstrous shoefly pie. Thewinged shoes had been cooked to a turn, the juices of theirfine leather suffusing the pie, which massed about asmuch as the griffin. This was an ideal meal for an ogre.

Smash marched up, not bothering to employ any stealth.The griffin whirled, half spreading its wings, issuing awarning squawk. Nobody in his right mind interfered witha feeding griffin, except a sufficiently large and hungrydragon.

But Smash was not in his right mind. No ogre ever was.There was simply not enough mind there to be right. "Megive he three, leave sight of me," he said. All ogres spokeonly in inane rhyme and lacked facility with pronouns,which they took to be edible roots. But ogres generallymade themselves plain enough, in their brutish fashion.

The griffin had not had prior experience with an ogre.That was its fortune. There were very few ogres in theseparts. The griffin opened its eagle beak wide and screecheda warning challenge.

Smash's bluff had been called. That was unfortunate,because no ogre was smart enough to bluff. With dimwit-ted joy, he rose to the prospect of mayhem. "One," he said,counting off on his smallest hamfinger. The griffin didn'tmove.

"Two." After a brief search, he found another finger.The griffin had had enough of this. It gave a raucousbattle cry and charged, which was just as well, for Smashhad lost count This sort of intellectual exercise was horren-dously difficult for his kind; his. head hurt and his fingersfelt numb. But now he was released from the necessity ofcounting all the way to three, and that was a great relief.

He grabbed the griffin by its bird beak and lion's tail,whirled it around, and hurled it out over the forest in acloud of small feathers and fur. The griffin, startled bythis reception, spread its wings, oriented, circled, decidedthe event must have been a fluke, and started to come infor another engagement. Ogres did not have a monopoly onstupidity!

Smash faced the lion-bodied bird. "Scram, hami" he bel-lowed.

The blast of the bellow tore out half a dozen pinfeathersand two flight feathers, and sent the griffin spinning out of

18                     Ogre, Ogre

control. The creature righted itself again, but this time de-cided to seek its fortune elsewhere. Thus did it finally dosomething halfway smart, yielding the stupidity title to the

ogre.

Smash took a flying leap into the center of the shoefly

pie. Leatherlike pastry crust flew up. The ogre grabbed abig handful of the delicious mess and stuffed it into hismaw. He slurped noisily on a boot, chewed the tongue inhalf, and masticated on a pleasantly tough heel. Oh, it wasgood! He grabbed two more handfuls, crunching soles andsucking on laces and spitting the metal eyelets out likeseeds. Soon all the pie was gone. He burped up a few metal

nails, well satisfied.

After gorging, he went to a stream and slurped a fewgallons of shivering cool water. As he lifted his head, he

heard a faint call. "Help! Help!"

Smash looked about, his ears rotating like those of theanimal he was, to orient on the sound. It came from anearby brambleberry bush. He parted the foliage with onegross finger and peered in. There was a tiny manlike crea-ture. "Help, please!" it cried.

Ogres had excellent eyesight, but this person was sosmall that Smash had to focus carefully to see him. Her. Itwas naked and had—well, it was a tiny female imp. "Whoyou?" he inquired politely, his breath almost knocking her

down.

"I'm Quieta the Imp," she cried, rearranging her hair,

which his breath had violently disarrayed. "Oh, ogre,ogre—my father's trapped and will surely perish if not res-cued soon. Please, I beseech you most prettily, help himescape, and I will reward you in my fashion."

Smash did not care one way or another about imps; theywere too small to eat; anyway, be was for the moment full.This one was hardly more massive than one of his fingers.He did, however, like rewards. "Okay, dokay," he agreed.

"My name's Quieta, not Dokay," she said primly. Sheled him to a spot under a soapstone boulder. It was, ofcourse, a very clean place, and the soap had been carvedinto interesting formations. There was her father-imp,caught in an alligator clamp. The alligator's jaws wereslowly chewing off his little leg.

19

Ogre, Ogre

"This is my father Ortant," Quieta said, introducingthem. "This is big ugly ogre."

"Pleased to meet you, Bigugly Ogre," Imp Ortant said aspolitely as the pain in his leg permitted.

Smash reached down, but his hamfingers were far toobig and clumsy to pry open the tiny clamp. "Queer ear," hetold the imps, and obediently both covered their minusculeears with minature hands.

Smash let out a small roar. The alligator clamp yipedand let go, scrambling back to the farthest reach of itsanchor-chain, where it cowered. The imp was free.

"Oh, thank you, thank you so much, ogrel" Quieta ex-claimed. "Here is your reward." She held out a tiny disk.

Smash accepted it, balancing it on the tip of one finger,his gross brow furrowing like a newly plowed field.

"It's a disposable reflector," Quieta explained proudly.Then, seeing that he did not comprehend: "A mirror, madefrom a film of soap-bubble. That's what we imps do. Wemake pretty, iridescent bubbles for the fairies, and lensesfor sunbeams, and sparkles for the morning dew. Eachitem works only once, so we are constantly busy, I can tellyou. We call it planned obsolescence. So now you have anice little mirror. But remember—you can use it only one

time."

Smash tucked the mirror into his bag, vaguely disap-pointed. Somehow, for no good reason, he had expected

more.

"Well, you saved my father only once," Quieta said de-fensively. "He's not very big, either. It's a perfect mirror,

you know."

Smash nodded, realizing that small creatures gave smallrewards. He wasn't quite sure what use the mirror wouldbe to him, since ogres did not look at their own ugly facesvery much, because their reflections tended to break mir-rors and curdle the surfaces of calm lakes; in any event,this mirror was far too small and frail to sustain his image.Since it could be used only once, he would save it for animportant occasion. Then he tromped to a pillow bush,pounded it almost flat and lumpy, and snored himself tosleep while the jungle trembled.

Ogre, Ogre

20

The weather was unconscionably fair the next day, butSmash tromped on regardless until he reached the castle ofthe Good Magician Humfrey. It was- not particularly im-posing. There was a small moat he could wade through,and an outer wall he could bash through—practically an

open invitation.

But Smash had learned at Castle Roogna that it was bestto be polite around Magicians, and not to bash too care-lessly into someone's castle. So he opened his bag of belong-ings and donned his finest apparel: an orange jacket andsteely gauntlets, given to him four years ago by the cen-taurs of Centaur Isle. The jacket was invulnerable to pene-tration by a weapon, and the gauntlets protected his ham-fists from the consequence of their own power. He had notworn these things before because he didn't want them to

get dirty. They were special.

Now, properly dressed, he cupped his mug and bellowedpolitely: "Some creep asleep?" Just in case the Good Magi-cian wasn't up yet.

There was no response. Smash tried again. "Me Smash.Me bash." That was letting the Magician know, delicately,

that he was coming in.

Still no answer. It seemed Humfrey was not paying at-tention. Having exhausted his knowledge of the require-ments of human etiquette as he understood them. Smashproceeded to act. He waded into the water of the moat witha great and satisfying splash. Washing was un-ogrish, butsplashing wasn't. In a moment the spume dimmed the sun-light and caused the entire castle to shine with moisture.

A sea monster swam to intercept him. Mostly that kinddid not frequent rivers or moats, but the Good Magicianhad an affinity for the unusual. "Hi, fly," Smash said affa-bly, removing a gauntlet and raising a hairy hamfist ingreeting. He generally got along all right with monsters, if

they were ugly enough.

The monster stared cross-eyed for a moment at the hugefist under its snout, noting the calluses, scars, and bama-clelike encrustations of gristle. Then the creature turnedtail and swam hastily away. Smash's greetings sometimesaffected other creatures like that; he wasn't sure why.

He redonned the gauntlet and forged on out of the moat,reaching a brief embankment from which th" wall rose. HeOgre, Ogre                      21

lifted one gauntleted hamfist to bash a convenient hole—•and spied something on the stone. It was a small lizard,dingy blah in color, with medium sandpaper skin, ineffi-cient legs, a truncated tail, and a pungent smell. Its meanlittle head swiveled around to fix on the ogre.

Smash's gauntleted hand snapped out, covering the liz-ard, blocking its head off from view. Ogres were stupid butnot suicidal. This little monster was no ordinary lizard; itwas a basilisk! Its direct glance was fatal, even to an ogre.

What was he to do? Soon the creature's poisonous bodywould corrode the metal of the gauntlet, and Smash wouldbe in trouble. He couldn't remain this way!

He remembered that Prince Dor had had a problem witha basilisk that was a cockatrice. Dor had sent news of abaleful henatrice, and the cock-lizard had hurried off at aswift crawl to find her. But Smash had no such resource;

he didn't know where a hen might be, and realized that thisone might even be a henatrice. It was hard to look closelyenough to ascertain the sexual status of such a creaturewithout getting one's eyeballs stoned. And if he had hap-pened to know where a basilisk of the opposite sex mightbe, how could he tell that news to this one? He didn't speakthe language. For that he needed the assistance of hisfriend Grundy the Golem, who could speak any languageat all.

Then he remembered the imp's disposable reflector. Hefished in his bag with his left mitt and, after severalclumsy tries, brought it out. He stuck it to the tip of hisgauntleted finger and poked it toward the region where thebasilisk's head should be.

Carefully he withdrew his right hand, averting his gaze.This was delicate work! If he aimed the mirror wrong, or ifit fell off his finger, or if the basilisk didn't look—

There was a plop on the ground at his feet. Oh, no! Themirror had fallen! Dismayed, he looked.

The basilisk lay stunned. It had seen its own reflectionin the mirror and suffered the natural consequence. Itwould recover after a while—but by then Smash would beout of its range.

The mirror had not dropped. It had shattered under theimpact of the basilisk's glare. But it had done its job. Quieta'slittle reward had proved worthwhile.

Smash scooped out a handful of dirt and dumped it overthe body of the basilisk so that he would not accidentallylook at it. As long as that mound was intact, he wouldknow he was safe.

Now he hefted his right fist and smashed it into thestone wall. Sand fragments flew outward from the impactwith satisfying force. This was sheer joy; only when exer-cising the prerogative of his name did Smash feel trulyhappy. Smashi Smash! Smashi Dust filled the air, and apile of rubble formed about him as the hole deepened.

Soon he was inside the castle. There was a second wall,an arm's reach inside the first. Oh, goody! This one was alattice of bars, not nearly as substantial as the first, butmuch better than nothing.

For variety. Smash used his left fist this time. After all,it needed fun and exercise, too. He smashed it into thebars.

The fist stopped short. Oooh, ouch! Only the gauntletpreserved it from injury, but it still smarted. This wasmuch tougher stuff than stone or metall

Smash took hold of the bars with both hands andheaved. His power should have launched the entire walltoward the clouds, but there was nary a budge. This wasthe strongest stuff he had encountered!

Smash paused to consider. What material could resist themight of an ogre?

Thinking was hard for his kind. His skull heated up un-comfortably, causing the resident fleas to jump off withhot feet. But in due course he concluded that there wasonly one thing as tough as an ogre, and that was anotherogre. He peered at the bars. Sure enough—these wereogres' bones, lashed together with ogres' sinews. No wonderhe had found them impervious!

This was a formidable barrier. He could not bashblithely through it—nor would he wish to, for the bones ofogres were sacred to ogres. Little else was.

Smash pondered some more. His brain was alreadysweating from the prior effort; now there was a scorchedsmell as the fur of his head grew hot. Ogres were creaturesof action, not cerebration! But again his valiant and painfuleffort was rewarded; he rammed through a notion.

"Oh, ogres' bones," he said. "Me know zones of deep,deep ground where can't be found."

The wall of bones quivered. All bad ogres craved inde-cent burial after death; it was one of their occasional linkswith the species of man. The best interment was in a gar-bage dump or toxic landfill for the disposal of poisonousplants and animals, but ordinary ground would do if prop-erly cursed and tromped down sufficiently hard.

"Me pound in mound with round of sound," Smash con-tinued, arguing his case with extraordinary eloquence.

That did it. The wall collapsed into an expectant pile.Smash picked up a bone, set it endwise against the ground,and, with a single blow of his gaundeted fist, drove it sodeep in the earth that it disappeared. He took another anddid the same. "Me flail he nail," he grunted, invoking anogrish ritual of disposal. He was nailing the ground.

Soon all the bones were gone. "Me fling he string," hesaid, poking the tendons down after the bones with his fin-ger and scooping dirt over the holes. Then he stomped themound, his big flat feet making the entire region reverber-ate boomingly. Stray stones fell from the walls of the castle,and the monster of the moat fled to the deepest muck.

At last it was time for the concluding benediction. "Bonedark as ink, me think he stink!" he roared, and there was afinal swirl of dust and grit. The site had been cursed, andthe burial was done.

But now a new hazard manifested. This was a kind oflinear fountain, the orange liquid shooting up high and fall-ing back to flow into a channel like a small moat. It wasrather pretty—but when Smash started to push through it,he drew back his hand with a grunt. That was not water—it was firewater!

He tried to walk around it, but the ring of fire sur-rounded the inner castle. He tried to jump over, but theflames leaped gleefully higher than he could, licking up totoast his fur. Ogres could not be hurt by much, but theydid feel pain when burned. This was awkward.

He tried to pound out a tunnel under the fire, but thewater flowed immediately into it and roasted him somemore. It danced with flickering delight, with evilly glitter-ing eyes forming within its substance, winking, mocking

24                    Ogre, Ogre                           .;

him, and fingers of flame elevating in obscene gestures.   ^This was in fact a firewater elemental, one of the most

formidable of spirits.

Smash pondered again. The effort gave him a splitting

headache. He held his face together with his two paws,   tforcing the split back together, squeezing his skull until thebone fused firm, and hurried back to the moat to soak his

head.                                                   |The cool shock of water not only got his head back to-gether, it gave him an idea. Ideas were rare things forogres, and not too valuable. But this one seemed good. Wa-ter not only cooled heads, it quenched fire. Maybe he could

use the moat to break through the wall of fire.

He formed his paw into a flipper and scooped a splash

through the hole in the outer wall toward the firewall. Thesplash scored—but the fire did not abate. It leaped higher,crackling mirthfully. He scooped again, wetting the wholeregion, but with no better effect The firewall danced un-harmed, mocking him with foul-smelling noises.

Ogres were slow to anger, because they lacked the wit toknow when they were being insulted. But Smash was get-ting there. He scooped harder, his paw moving like a crudepaddle, hurling a steady stream of moatwater at the wall.Still the fire danced, though the water flooded the region.Smash labored yet harder, feeling the exhilaration of chal-lenge and violence, until the level of the moat lowered andthe entire cavity between the outer wall and the firewallsurged with muddy fluid. The sea monster's tail was ex-posed by the draining water; it hastily squiggled deeper.Still the fire danced, humming a hymn of victory; it couldnot be quenched. Water was as much its element as fire. Itmerely flickered on the surface, spreading wider, reaching

toward Smash. Was there no way to defeat it?

"Hoool" Smash exclaimed, frustrated. But the blast of ;

his breath only made the flame bow concavely and leap yet |

higher. It liked hot air as well as cool water,              j

Smash couldn't think of anything better to do, so he keptshoveling water. The flood level rose and backwatercoursed out through the gap. Smash tried to dam it up withrubble, but the level was too high. The fire still flickeredmerrily on the surface, humming a tune about an old

flame.

Ogre, Ogre                      25

Then the ogre had one more smart notion, a prohibi-tively rare occurrence for his kind. He dived forward,spread his arms, and swam under the fire. It couldn't reachhim below the moatwater. He came up beyond it, the lasthurdle navigated.

"Ccurrssess!" the firewater hissed furiously, and flick-ered out.

Now Smash stood within a cluttered room. Books over-flowed shelves and piled up on the floor. Bottles and boxesperched everywhere, interspersed with assorted statuettesand amulets and papers. In the middle of it all, like an-other item of clutter, hunched over a similarly crowdedwooden desk, was a little gnome of a man. Smash recog-nized him—the Good Magician Humfrey, the man whoknew everything.

Humfrey glanced up from his tome. "Don't drip on mybooks, Smash," he said.

Smash fidgeted, trying not to drip on the books. Therewas hardly room for him to stand upright, and hardly aspot without a book, volume, or tome. He started to drip onan amulet, but it crackled ominously and he edged away."Me no stir. Magician sir," he mumbled, wondering howthe Good Magician knew his name. Smash knew of Hum-frey by description and reputation, but this was the firsttime the two had met.

"Well, out with it, ogre," the Magician snapped irritably."What's your Question?"

Now Smash felt more awkward than ever. The truthwas, he did not know what to ask. He had thought his lifewould be complete when he achieved his full growth, butsomehow he found it Wasn't. Something was missing—andhe didn't know what. Yet he could not rest until the miss-ing element was satisfied. So he had tromped to see theGood Magician, because that was what creatures withseemingly insoluble problems did—but he lacked the intel-lect to formulate the Question. He had hoped to work it outduring the journey; but, with typical ogrish wit, he had for-gotten all about it until this moment. There was no gettingaround it; there were some few occasions when an ogre wastoo stupid for his own good. "No know," he confessed,standing on one of his own feet.

Humfrey scowled. He was a very old gnome, and it was

26                     O^fe, Ogre

quite a scowl. "You came here to serve a year's service foran Answer—and you don't have a Question?"

Smash had a Question, he was sure; he just didn't knowhow to formulate it. So he stood silent, dripping on stray

artifacts, like the unsmart oaf he was.

Humfrey sighed. "Even if you asked it, it wouldn't bethe right Question," he said. "People are forever asking thewrong Questions, and wasting their efforts. I remember notlong ago a girl came to ask how to change her nature. Cha-meleon, her name was, except she wasn't called that then.Her nature was just fine; it was her attitude that needed

changing." He shook his head.

As it happened. Smash knew Chameleon. She wasPrince Dor's mother, and she changed constantly fromsmart to stupid and from beautiful to ugly. Humfrey wasright: her nature was just fine. Smash liked to talk withher when she was down at his own level of idiocy, and tolook at her when she was at his level of ugliness. But thetwo never came together, unfortunately. Still, she was afairly nice person, considering that she was human.

"Very well," Humfrey said in a not-very-well voice. "Weare about to have a first: an Answer without a Question.Are you sure you wish to pay the fee?"

Smash wasn't sure, but did not know how to formulatethat uncertainty, either. So he just nodded afBrmatively,his shaggy face scaring a cuckoo bird that had been aboutto signal the hour. The bird signaled the hour with a terri-fied dropping instead of a song, and retreated into its

cubby.

"So be it," the Magician said, shrugging. "You will dis-cover what you need among the Ancestral Ogres." Then hegot up and marched to the door. "Come on; my effaced

wife will see about your service."

Numbly, Smash followed. Now he had his Answer—and

he didn't understand it.

They went downstairs—apparently, somehow, in a man-ner that might have been intelligible to a creature ofgreater wit, Smash had gotten upstairs in the process ofswimming under the firewall and emerging in the GoodMagician's study—where Humfrey's wife awaited them.This was the lovely, faceless Gorgon—faceless because ifher face were allowed to show, it would turn men instantly

Ogre, Ogre                      27

to stone. Even faceless, she was said to have a somewhatpetrifying effect. "Here he is," Humfrey said, as if deliver-ing a bag of bad apples.

The Gorgon looked Smash up and down—or seemed to.Several of the little serpents that substituted for her hairhissed. "He certainly looks like an ogre," she remarked. "Ishe housebroken?"

"Of course he's not housebroken!" Humfrey snapped."He dripped all over my studyl Where's the girl?"

"Tandy!" the Gorgon called.

A small girl appeared, rather pretty in a human way,with brown tresses and blue eyes and a spunky, tumed-upnose. "Yes'm?"

"Tandy, you have completed your year's service thisdate," the Gorgon said. "Now you will have your Answer."

The little girl's eyes brightened like noontime patches ofclear sky. She squiggled with excitement. "Oh, thank you,Gorgon. I'm almost sorry to leave, but I really should re-turn home. My mother is getting tired of only seeing me inthe magic mirror. What is my Answer?"

The Gorgon nudged Humfrey, her voluptuous body rip-pling as she moved. "The Answer, spouse."

"Oh. Yes," the Good Magician agreed, as if this had notbefore occurred to him. He cleared his throat, considering.

"Also say, what me pay," Smash said, not realizing thathe was interrupting an important cogitation.

"The two of you travel together," Humfrey said.

Smash stared down at the tiny girl, and Tandy stared upat the hulking ogre. Each was more dismayed than theother. The ogre stood two and a half times the height of thegirl, and that was the least of the contrast between them.

"But I didn't ask—" Tandy protested.

"What me task?" Smash said simultaneously. Had hebeen more alert, he might have thought to marvel that eventhis overlapping response rhymed.

The Gorgon seemed to smile. "Sometimes my husband'spronouncements need a little interpretation," she said. "Heknows so much more than the rest of us, he fails to makeproper allowance for our ignorance." She pinched Hum-frey's cheek in a remarkably familiar manner. "He meansthis: the two of you. Smash and Tandy, are to travelthrough the wilds of Xanth together, fending off hazards

28

Ogre, Ogre

Ogre, Ogre

29

together. That is the ogre's service in lieu of a year's laborat this castle—protecting his companion. It is also the girl'sAnswer, for which she has already paid."

"That's exactly what I said," Humfrey grumped.

"You certainly did, dear," the Gorgon agreed, planting afaceless loss on the top of his head.

"But it doesn't make sense!" Tandy protested.

"It doesn't have to make sense," the Gorgon explained."It's an Answer."

Oh. Now Smash understood, as far as he was able.

"May I go back to my tome?" the Good Magician askedpetulantly.

"Why, of course you may," the Gorgon replied gra-ciously, patting his backside as he turned. The Good Magi-cian climbed back up toward his study. Smash knew theman had lost valuable working time, but somehow the Ma-gician did not seem unhappy. Naturally the nuances of hu-man interrelations were beyond the comprehension of amere ogre.

The Gorgon returned her attention to them. "He's such adarling," she remarked. "I really don't know how he sur-vived a century without me." She focused, seemingly, onTandy. "And you might, if you would, do me a favor onthe way," the Gorgon said. "I used to live on an island nearthe Magic Dust Village, which I think is right on yourroute to Lake Ogre-Chobee. I fear I caused some mischieffor that village in my youth; I know I am not welcomethere. But my sister the Siren remains in the area, and ifyou would convey my greetings to her—"

"But how can I travel with an ogre?" Tandy protested."That's not an Answer; that's a punishment 1 He'll gobbleme up the first time he gets hungryl"

"Not necessarily so," the Gorgon demurred. "Smash isno ordinary ogre. He's honest and halfway civilized. Hewill perform his service correctly, to the best of his limitedunderstanding. He will not permit any harm to come toyou. In fact, you could hardly have a better guardian whiletraversing the jungles of Xanth."

"But how does this solve my problem, even if I'm notgobbled up?" Tandy persisted. Smash saw that her spunkynose was a correct indication of her character; she had a

fighting spirit despite her inadequate size. "Traveling won'tsolve a thing! There's nowhere I can go to—"

The Gorgon touched the girl's lips with a forefinger."Let your problem be private for now, dear. Just accept myassurance. If my husband says traveling will solve yourproblem, then traveling will solve it. Humfrey knew anogre would be coming here at this time, and knew youneeded that sort of protection, since you have so little fa-miliarity with the outside world. Believe me, it will turnout for the best."

"But I don't have anywhere to go!"

"Yes, but Smash does. He is seeking the AncestralOgres."

"A whole tribe of ogres? I'm absolutely doomed!"

The Gorgon's expression was facelessly reproving. "Nat-urally you do not have to follow the advice you paid for,dear. But the Good Magician Humfrey really does knowbest."

"I think he's getting old," Tandy said rebelliously."Maybe he doesn't know as much as he used to."

"He likes to claim that he's forgotten more than he everknew," the Gorgon said. "Perhaps that is so. But do notunderestimate him. And don't misjudge this ogre."

Tandy pouted. "Oh, all right! I'll go with the monster.But if he gobbles me up, you'll be responsible! I'll neverspeak to you again."

"I accept the responsibility," the Gorgon agreed. "NowSmash is hungry." She turned to him. "Come to thekitchen, ogre, for a peck or two of raw potatoes. Theyhaven't been cleaned, and some have worms; you'll likethem."

"You're joking!" Tandy said. Then she looked again atSmash, who was licking his chops. "You're not joking!"

"Well spoke; no joke," Smash agreed, hoping therewould also be a few barrels of dirty dishwater to glug downwith the potatoes. Tandy grimaced.

Chapter 3. Eye Queue

They traveled together, but it was no pleasurefor either. Smash had to take tiny slow steps to enable thegirl to keep up, and Tandy made it plain she consideredthe ogre to be a monstrous lout. She refused to let himcarry her, as he could readily have done; despite the Gor-gon's assurances, she was afraid of getting gobbled. Sheseemed to have a thing about monsters, and male monstersin particular; she hated them. So they wended their tediousway south toward Lake Ogre-Chobee—a journey thatshould have taken Smash alone a single day, but promisedto take several days with Tandy. The Good Magician hadcertainly come up with a bad chore in lieu of his year'sservice for an Answer! And Smash still didn't know what

Question had been answered.

The scenery was varied. At first they crossed rollinghills; it took some time for Tandy to get the hang of walk-ing on a hill that rolled, and she took several tumbles. For-tunately, the hills were covered with soft, green turf, sothat the girl could roll with the punches, head over feetwithout much damage. Smash did note, as a point of disin-terest, that his companion was not the child she seemed.She was very small even for her kind, but in the course ofher tumbles she displayed well-formed limbs and torso. Shewas a little woman, complete in every small detail. Smashknew about such details because he had once traveled toMundania with Prince Dor and Princess Irene, and thatgirl Irene had somehow managed to show off every salientfeature of her sex in the course of the adventure, all thewhile protesting that she wanted no one to see. Tandy had

30

Ogre, Ogre                     31

less of each, but was definitely of a similar overall configu-ration. And her exposures, it seemed, were genuinely unin-tentional, rather than artful. She evidently had no notion ofwhat to wear on such a trip. In fact, she seemed amazinglyignorant of Xanth terrain. It was as if she had never beenhere before—which, of course, was nonsense. Every citizenof Xanth had lived in Xanth, as had even the zombies andghosts, who no longer lived, but remained active.

After they passed the rolling hills they came to a morestable area, where a tangle tree held sway. Tanglers werelike dragons and ogres in this respect: no sensible creaturetangled voluntarily with one. Smash didn't even thinkabout it; he just stepped around it, letting it sway alone.

But Tandy walked straight down the neat, clear paththat always led to such trees, innocently sniffing the pleas-ant fragrance of the evil plant. She was almost within itsquiveringly hungry embrace before Smash realized that shereally didn't know what it was.

Smash dived for the girl, trying to snatch her out of thegrasp of the twitching tentacles. "No gol" he bellowed.

Tandy saw him. "Eeek! The monster's going to gobbleme!" she cried. But it was Smash she meant, not the realmenace. She scooted on inside the canopy of the dreadtree.

With a gleeful swish, the hanging tentacles pounced.Five of them caught her legs, arms, and head. The girl washauled up and carried toward the slavering wooden orificein the base of the trunk. She screamed foolishly, as was herkind's wont in such circumstances.

Smash took only a moment to assess the situation.Thought with his brain was tedious and fatiguing and nonetoo effective, but thought with his muscles was swift andsure. He saw Tandy in midair, wearing a pretty red printdress and matching red slippers; tentacles were grabbing atthese, assuming them to be edible portions. One tentaclewas tugging at her hair, dislodging the red ribbon in it. In amoment the tree would realize that the red was only thewrapping, and would tear that away and get down to seri-ous business.

Smash could handle a small tangler; he was, after all, anogre. But this was a big tangler. It had a hundred or morepythonlike tentacles, and a personality to match its

32 Ogre, Ogre

strength. There was no way to negotiate or to reason withit; Smash had to fight.

The ogre charged in. That wasn't hard; tanglers wantedcreatures to enter their turf. It was the getting out againthat was difficult. He grabbed the mass of tentacles thathad wrapped around the terrified and struggling girl. "Treelet be," he grunted, hauling the works back away from thesap-drooling orifice.

Now, tanglers were ferocious, but not unduly stupid.This tree was full-sized—but so was the ogre. Very fewthings cared to cross an ogre. The tree hesitated, and itscoils about the girl loosened.

Then the tree decided that it could, after all, handle thischallenge and gain a respectable meal in the bargain. Itattacked Smash with its remaining tentacles.

Smash had been wary of this, but was stuck for it. Hegrabbed a tentacle in each hand and yanked—but the ma-terial was flexible and stretchable, and moved with him.He lacked the leverage to rip the tentacles out. Meanwhile,Tandy was being carried back to the orifice, trailing tornswatches of red cloth.

Smash tried a new tactic: he squeezed. Now the treekeened in vegetable pain as its two tentacles were con-stricted into jelly, dripped and spurted juice, and finallywere lopped off. But the thing expected to take somelosses, and it could always grow new tentacles; Tandy wasalmost at the glistening maw. A limber fiber tongue wastasting the red fabric. By the dme Smash could truncate allthe tentacles, the girl would be long digested.

Smash hurled himself at the orifice. He smashed hisgauntleted fists into it, breaking off the wooden teeth. Sapsplashed, burning his fur where it struck. The tree roaredwith a sound like sundering timber, but the tentacles keptcoming.

The ogre braced himself before the orifice, blocking theentry of the girl. She banged into him before the tree real-ized this, and he was able to grab a couple more tentaclesand pinch them off. Now the tree could not consume heruntil it dealt with him—and he was turning out to betougher than it had anticipated. In fact, he was turning outtougher than he had anticipated; he had thought the treehad the advantage, but he was faring pretty well.

Ogre, Ogre                      33

It was a bad thing in Xanth when a predator misjudgedits foe. The tree was now in trouble, but had to fight on.As new tentacles converged. Smash caught them, twistedseveral together, and tied their tips into a great raveledknot that he shoved into the orifice in the trunk. The mawclosed automatically, squirting digestive sap—and the treesuffered a most unpleasant surprise. The keening of agonymagnified piercingly.

During this distraction. Smash unwrapped the girl,squeezing each tentacle until it let go. Soon Tandy stood onthe ground, disheveled, shaken, but intact. "So—go,"Smash said, catching other questing tentacles to clear herescape.

The girl scooted out. She might be small and ignorant,but she didn't freeze long in a crisis! Now Smash retreatedcautiously, glaring at hovering tentacles to discourage re-newed attack. But the tree had had enough; the ogre haddefeated it. There was no further aggression.

Smash stepped out, privately surprised. How was it hehad been able to foil a tangler this size? He concentrated,with effort, and managed to come to a conclusion; he hadgrown since the last time he had tangled with a tangler.Before, he would not have been strong enough to handle it;

now, with his larger mass and the gauntlets, he had the ad-vantage. His self-image had not kept pace with his physicalcondition. He knew his father Crunch could have handledthis tree; he, Smash, was now as powerful as that.

Tandy was waiting for him down the path. She wassadly bedraggled, her dress in tatters, and bruises on herbody, but her spirit remained spunky. "I guess I have toapologize to you. Smash," she said. "I thought—nevermind what I thought. You risked your life to save me frommy folly. I was being childish; you were mature."

"Sure—mature," Smash agreed, uncertain what she wasgetting at. People did not apologize to ogres, so he had nobasis for comprehension.

"Well, next time you tell me 'no go,' I'll pay better at-tention," she concluded.

He shrugged amenably. That would make things easier.

The day was getting on, and they were tired. Battlingtangle trees tended to have that effect. Smash -located amuffin bush with a number of fresh ripe muffins, and

34

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Ogre, Ogre

35

used his finger to punch a hole in a lime-soda tree so theycould drink. Then he found a deserted harpy nest in a tree,long since weathered out, so that the filth and smell weregone. He harvested a blanket from a blanket bush and usedit to line the nest. This was for Tandy to sleep in. It tookher some time to catch on, but as darkness loomed acrossthe land in the grim way it had in the wilderness, and thenocturnal noises began, she was glad enough to clamber toit scad curl up in it. He noted that she was good at climb-ing, though she hardly seemed to know what a tree was.He settled down below, on guard.

Tandy did not sleep immediately. Curled in her nest, shetalked. Apparently this was a human trait. "You know,Smash, I've never been out on the surface of Xanth on footbefore. I was raised in the caverns, and then I rode a night-mare to the Good Magician's castle. That was an accident;

I really wanted to go to Castle Roogna to see my father,Crombie. But dawn came too soon, and I was out of sleep-ing pills, and—well, I sort of had to ask a Question so as tohave a nice place to stay until I figured out what to do. Ispent a whole year working inside the castle; I never evenset foot beyond the moat, because I was afraid a certainparty would be lurking for me. So it's not surprising I don'tknow about things like rolling hills and tangle trees."

That explained a lot. Smash realized he would have towatch her more closely, to be sure she did not walk into alethal trap. The Magician's rationale for having her travelwith him was making more sense. She certainly could notsafely travel alone.

"I'm sorry I distrusted you. Smash," she continued inher talkative way. "You see, I was raised near demons, andin some ways you resemble a demon. Big and strong anddusky. I was prejudiced."

Smash grunted noncommittally. He had not met manydemons, but doubted they could powder rock in the man-ner of ogres.

"I certainly have a lot to learn, don't I?" she continuedruefully. "I thought trees were sweet plants and ogres werebad brutes, and now I know they aren't."

Oops. "Ogre. No—grrr!" Smash exclaimed emphatically.

Tandy was quick to catch on; she had the ready intelli-

gence of her kind. "You mean I shouldn't trust all ogres?That they really do gobble people?"

"Ogres prone to crunch bone," Smash agreed.

"But you didn't—I— mean—" she grew doubtful.

"Smash work hard, girl to guard."

"Oh, you mean because the Good Magician charged youwith my protection," she said, relieved. "Your service foryour Answer. So ogres do gobble people and crunch bones,but they also honor their obligations."

Smash didn't follow all of the vocabulary, but it soundedabout right, so he grunted assent.

"Very well. Smash," she concluded. "I'll trust you, butwill be wary of all other ogres. And all other things ofXanth, too, especially if they seem too nice to be true."

That was indeed best. They lapsed into sleep.

No one bothered them in the night. After all, the night-mares had to be wary of Tandy, after she had ridden oneof them, and he wasn't sure whether the mares knew howto climb trees. As for himself—it was always the best pol-icy to let a sleeping ogre lie.

They breakfasted on sugar sand and cocoa-nut milk.Tandy had never before- drunk cocoa and was intrigued bythe novelty. She was also amazed by the way Smash liter-ally shoveled the sugar into his mouth, hardly pausing tochew, and crunched up whole cocoa-nuts, husks and all."You really are a monster," she said, half admiringly, andSmash grunted agreement, pleased.

Then they resumed their trek south, encountering onlyroutine creatures. A toady was hopping north, looking forsome important person to advise; when told that CastleRoogna was many days of hopping distant, it contorted itsbroad and warty mouth into a scowl. "I hope I don't croakbefore I get there," it said, and moved on. Croaking, itseemed, was bad form for toadies.

Then there was the quack, with a wide bill and webbedfeet and a bag of special magic medicines. He was, he ex-plained, looking for a suitable practice, where his marvel-ous remedies would be properly appreciated. Meanwhile,did they happen to knew where Pete was? Pete was a bog,very good for delving. Since Pete wasn't north, where

36 Ogre, Ogre

Tandy and Smash had come from, and probably wasn'tsouth, where the Magic Dust Village was supposed to be,and wasn't west, where the quack had come from, it had tobe east, by elimination. The quack coughed and, his mindjogged by the term, deposited some genuine fresh birdlimeon the ground. Flies instantly materialized, having a tastefor lime, and Smash and Tandy moved on.

By noon they were in rougher territory. Sweatersswarmed about them, causing them to perspire, untilSmash got fed up and issued a bellowing roar that blewthem all away. Unfortunately, it also blew the leaves offthe nearest trees, and several more tatters from Tandy'sdress.

Then they encountered a region of curse-burrs—littleballs of irritation that clung tenaciously to any portion ofthe body they encountered. Smash's face lit up in a horren-dous smile. "Me remember here!" he cried. "Me whelpednear."

"You were born here? Amidst these awful burrs?"Tandy smiled ruefully. "I should have known."

Smash laughed. It sounded like a rockslide in a canyon."Me sire Crunch, best of bunch." He looked avidly about,whelphood memories filtering back into his thick skull. Lat-er, his family had moved to the vicinity of Castle Roogna,because his lovely mother, whose hair was like nettles andwhose face would make a zombie blush, had felt their cubshould have some slight exposure to civilization. Crunch,the slave of love, had acceded to this un-ogrish notion; whocould resist the blandishments of such a mushface asSmash's mother?

"Oh, this is awful!" Tandy protested. "These burrs aregetting in my hair." It seemed human girls were sensitiveto that sort of thing.

"Could be worse," Smash said helpfully. "She makecurse."

"Curse?" she asked blankly.

Smash demonstrated. "Burr—grrr!" he growled. A burrdropped lifelessly off his gross nose.

"I don't think I can make such rhymes," Tandy said.Then a burr stuck her finger. "Get away, you awfulthing!" she exploded.

The burr dropped off. Tandy looked at it, comprehend-

Ogre, Ogre                     37

ing. She was certainly intelligent! "Oh, I see. You just haveto curse them away!"

Even so, it was not easy, for Tandy had been raised as anice girl and did not know many curses. They hurried outof the burr region.

Now they came to a dead forest. The trees stood gaunt,petrified in place. "I'd like to know how that happened,"Tandy remarked. Smash knew, but it was a long story in-volving the romantic meeting of his parents, and it washard for him to formulate it properly, so he let it go..

In the afternoon they came to a region of brambles.These were aggressive plants with glistening spikes. Smashcould wade through them imperviously, for his skin was sotough he hardly felt the few thorns they dared to stick himwith. It was quite another matter for Tandy, who had deli-cate and sweet-smelling skin, the kind that was made to betormented by thorns.

There were neatly cleared paths through the bramblesthat Tandy was inclined to use, but Smash cautioned heragainst this. "Lion, ant, between plant."

Her small brow wrinkled. "I don't see anything."

Then an ant-lion appeared. It had the head of a lion andthe body of an ant, and massed about as much as the girldid; it was, of course, ten times as ferocious as anything anice girl could imagine. It roared when it spied her, strid-ing forward aggressively.

Smash roared back. The ant-lion hastily reversed course;

it had been so distracted by the luscious prey that it hadnot before seen the unluscious guardian. But Smash knewthat soon many more would arrive and would swarm overthe intruders. This was no safe place, even for the likes ofhimself.

"Now I understand," Tandy said, turning pale. "Smash,let's get out of here!"

But already there were rustlings behind them. The ant-lions had surrounded them. There would be no easy escape.

"Me know path, avoid ant wrath," Smash said, lookingupward. How fortunate that he had been raised in this vi-cinity, so that useful details of geography were comingback to his slow memory!

"Oh, I couldn't swing from branch to branch through the

38 Ogre, Ogre

trees the way I'm sure you can," Tandy said, "I'm agile,but not that agile. I'd be sure to fall."

But the ant-lions were closing in, a full pride of them.Smash had to pick Tandy up to get her out of their reach.Thus burdened, he was unable to fight effectively. Realiz-ing this, the ants grew bolder, closing in, growling andsnapping. The situation was getting awkward.

Then Smash spied what he was looking for—the aerealpath. "Take care. Go there," he said, boosting the girl upby her pert bottom.

"But it's sidewise!" she protested, peering at the pathwith dismay. "I'd fall offi"

"Stand tall. No fall," he insisted.

Tandy obviously didn't believe him. But an ant-lionleaped for her, jaws gaping, large front pincers snapping,so she reached up to grab for the high path.

Suddenly she landed on it—sidewise. "I'm level!" shecried, amazed. "The world has turned!" She stood up, orrather sidewise, her body parallel to the ground.

Smash didn't worry about it. He knew the properties ofthe path, having played on it as a cub. It was alwayslevel—to the person on it. He was now far too massive touse it himself, since the aereal path was getting old and brit-tle, but he didn't need to. He was now unencumbered, free todeal with the lions his own way.

The lions, angered at the escape of the lesser prey,pounced on the greater prey. That was foolish of them.Smash emitted a battle bellow that tore their whiskers backand clogged then- pincers with debris, then began stomp-ing and pounding. Lions yowled as the gauntleted fists con-nected, and screeched as the hairy feet found flesh. ThenSmash picked up two ants by their narrow waists andhurled them into the nettles. He took a moment to rip asmall hemlock tree out of the ground, shaking the locksfrom its hem, and bit off its top, forming a fair club fromthe remaining trunk. Soon the path was clear; the ant-lions,like the tangle tree, had learned new respect for ogres.

"You're really quite something. Smash!" Tandy called,clapping her hands. "You're a real terror when you getworked up. I'll bet there's nothing more formidable than anangry ogre!" She had an excellent view of the proceedings

Ogre, Ogre                     39

from the elevated path, dodging when an ant flew past.Ant-lions did not normally fly; this was a consequence ofbeing hurled out of the way. Ants were now stuck in anumber of the jungle trees.

"Me know who," Smash grunted, pleased. "Ogres two."

She laughed. "That figures. The only thing tougher thanone ogre is two ogres." She was now standing inverted, herbrown tresses hanging naturally about her shoulders as ifshe were upright. She looked about, from her vantage."The ants aren't gone, just backed oif. Smash," she re-ported. "Can you come up here?"

Smash shook his head no. But he wasn't worried. Hecould use the ant paths. If the ants wanted a little moreogre-type fun, he would gladly accommodate them.

They proceeded south, Tandy tilting with the orientationof the aereal path, sometimes upright, sometimes not, en-joying the experience. "There is nothing much in the cav-erns like this!" she commented.

Smash tromped along the ant highways, tearing throughnettles when he needed to change paths. Soon the nettlesand ants were left behind, but the high path continued, soTandy stayed on it. Smash knew it terminated at the MagicDust Village, and since they had to pass there anyway, thiswas convenient. According to Castle Roogna information,the Magic Dusters had once had a population problem, notbeing able to hold on to their males, so they had con-structed the skyway to encourage immigration. Now therewere plenty of people at the village, so the path didn't mat-ter, but no one had bothered to take it down. Smash andTandy made excellent progress.

Now they passed a region of hanging vines. They weretwined, almost braided, like queues, and seemed to haveeyes looking out from their recesses. Smash distrusted un-familiar things in general and dangling vines in particular,so he avoided the Eye Queues. They could be harmless, orthey could be bloodsuckers. This was beyond the region ofhis cubhood familiarity, and anyway, things could havechanged in the interim. One could never take magic forgranted.

He also kept an eye on Tandy, above, to make sure shedid not brush against any vines. As a result, he didn't pay

40 Ogre, Ogre

close enough attention to his big feet—and stumbled over aminor boulder that was damming a streamlet, much to thestreamlet's annoyance.

The boulder dam shattered, of course; it was only stone.The streamlet gladly flowed through, with a burble ofthanks to its deliverer. But Smash suffered a momentaryloss of balance, his feet sinking into the sodden riverbed,and he lurched headlong into a hanging vine.

The thing wrapped disgustingly around his head. Hesnatched at it, but already it was sinking into his fur andhis flesh and hurting terribly when he tried to scrape itloose. Since an ogre's course was generally that of mostresistance. Smash put both hands to his scalp andscraped—and the burgeoning agony made him reel.

"Stop, Smash, stop!" Tandy screamed from above."You'll rip off your head!"

Smash stopped. "I concur. There is no sense in that."

Tandy stared down at him. "What did you say?"

"I said there is no sense in mortifying my flesh, sincethe queue does not appear to have seriously incapacitatedme."

"Smash—you're not rhyming!"

"Why—so I am not!" he agreed, startled. "That must bethe curse of the Eye Queue; it has disrupted my naturalmechanism of communication."

"It's done more than that!" Tandy exclaimed. "Smash,you sound smart!"

"That must be a fallacious impression. No ogre is undulyintelligent."

"Well, you sure sound smart!" she insisted. "That EyeQueue, as you call it, must have added some brains to yourhead."

• "That seems reasonable," he agreed, after cogitating mo-mentarily without effort. "The effect manifested concur-rently with my contact with that object. Probability sug-gests a causal connection. This, of course, is much worsethan any purely physical attack would have been; it hastemporarily un-ogred me. I must expunge it from my sys-tem!"

"Oh, no, don't do that," she protested. "It's sort of inter-esting, really. I don't mind you being smart. Smash. It'smuch easier to talk with you."

Ogre, Ogre                      41

"In any event, I seem unable for the moment to deacti-vate it," Smash said. "It seems I must tolerate this curse forthe time being. But I assure you I shall be alert for anantidote."

"Okay," she said. "If that's the way you feel.""Indubitably."

They went on—and now Smash noted things that hadn'tinterested him before. He saw how erosion had caused riftsin the land, and how the forest stratified itself, with light-indifferent vegetation and fungi at the nether levels andbright, broad leaves above to catch the descending light ofthe sun. The entire jungle was a cohesive unit, functioningcompatibly with its environment. All over Xanth, thingswere integrating—in his new awareness. How blind he hadbeen to the wonders of magic, all his life!

As dusk closed, the aereal path descended to the ground,and they arrived at the Magic Dust Village. A troll cameforth to meet them. "Ogre, do you come in peace or may-hem?" the creature inquired, standing poised for flightwhile other villagers hastily manned the fortifications andcleared children and the aged from the region.

"In peace!" Tandy said quickly. "I am Tandy; this isSmash, who is protecting me from monsters."

The troll's eyes gaped. This was an unusual expression,even for this type of creature. "Protecting you from—?""Yes."

"Now, we have no prejudice against monsters here," thetroll said, scratching his long and homy nose with a discol-ored claw. "I'm a monster myself, and some of my bestfriends are monsters. But only a fool trusts an ogre."

"Well, I'm a fool," Tandy said. "This ogre fought a tan-gle tree to save me."

"Are you sure you aren't a kidnap victim? You certainlydo look good enough to eat."

Smash did not appreciate the implication, which wouldhave passed him by had he not suffered the curse of theEye Queue vine. "My father is Crunch, the vegetarianogre," he said gruffly. "My family has not kidnapped any-one in years."

The troll looked at him, startled. "You certainly don'tsound like an ogre! Did the Transformer-King transformyou to this shape?"

42 Ogre, Ogre

"I was whelped an ogre!" Smash insisted, the first tracesof roar coming into his voice.

Then the troll made a connection. "Ah, yes. Crunchmarried a curse-fiend actress. You have human lineage;

that must account for your language."

"It must," Smash agreed drolly. He found he didn't careto advertise his misadventure with the vine. He would belaughed out of the village if its inhabitants learned he wasintelligent. "But I should advise you, purely in the interestof amity, that I have been known to take exception to theappellation 'half-breed.' I am a true ogre." He picked up anearby knot of green wood and squeezed it in one hand.The green juice dripped as the wood pulped, until at lastthere was a pool of green on the ground and the knot hadbecome a lump of coal.

"Yes, indeed," the troll agreed hastily. "No one herewould think of using that term. Welcome to our table forsupper; you are surely hungry."

"We are only passing through," Tandy said. "We'regoing to Lake Ogre-Chobee."

"You can't get there from here," the troll said. "The Re-gion of Madness intervenes."

"Madness?" Tandy asked, alarmed.

"From the airborne magic dust we process. Magic isvery potent here, and too much of it leads to alarming ef-fects. You will have to go around."

They did not argue the case. Smash's inordinate intelli-gence, coupled with his memories of this region, corrobor-ated the information; he knew it would be impossible forhim to protect Tandy in the Region of Madness. Therewere tales of the constellations of the night coming to life,and of reality changing dangerously. In Xanth, things weremostly what they seemed to be, so that illusion was oftenreality. But illusion could be taken too far in the height-ened magic of the Madness. Smash was now too smart torisk it.

They joined the villagers' supper. Creatures of everytype came forth to feed, all well behaved: elves, gnomes,goblins, a manticore, fauns, nymphs, fairies, human beings,centaurs, griffins, and assorted other creatures. The hostesswas the troll's mate, Trolla. "It is much easier to arrivethan to depart," she explained as she served up helpings of

Ogre, Ogre                      43

smashed potatoes and poured out goblets of mead. "Wehave never had opportunity to construct an exit ramp, andour work mining the source of magic is important, so westay. You may choose to remain also: we labor hard, but itis by no means a bad life."

Smash exchanged a glance with Tandy, since it occurredto him that this might be the sort of situation she was look-ing for. But she was negative. "We have a message fromthe sister of a neighbor of yours. We must get on and de-liver it."

"A neighbor?" Trolla asked.

"She is called the Siren."

There was a sudden hush.

"You know," Tandy said. "The sister of the Gorgon."

"You are friend to the Gorgon?" Trolla asked coldly.

"I hardly know her," Smash said quickly, rememberingthat this village had suffered at the Gorgon's hands—orrather, her face, having had all the men turned to stone.Fortunately, that mischief had been undone at the time ofthe loss of magic, when all Xanth had become as drear asMundania, briefly. Numerous spells had been aborted inthat period, changing Xanth in ways that were still unrav-eling. "I had to see Good Magician Humfrey, and she's hiswife. She asked us to say hello to the Siren."

"Oh, I see." Trolla relaxed, and the others followed herexample. There were murmurs of amazement and awe."The Good Magician's wife! And she turned him tostone?"

"Not anywhere we could see," Tandy said, then blushed."Uh, that is—"

Trolla smiled. "He's probably too old for such enchant-ment anyway, so the sight of her merely stiffens his spine,or whatever." She gulped a goblet of mead. "The Siren nolonger lures people, since a smart centaur broke her magicdulcimer. She is not a bad neighbor, but we really don'tassociate with her."

They finished their repast, Smash happily consuming allthe refuse left after the others were done. The villagers setthem up with rooms for the night. Smash knew these werehonest, well-meaning folk, so he didn't worry about Tan-dy's safety here.

As he lay on his pile of straw. Smash thought about the

place of the Magic Dust Village in the scheme of Xanth.Stray references to it bubbled to the surface of his mem-ory—things he had heard at different times in his life andthought nothing of, since ogres thought nothing of every-thing. From these suddenly assimilating fragments he wasnow able to piece together the role of this village, geologi-cally. Here it was that the magic dust welled to the surfacefrom the mysterious depths. The villagers pulverized it andemployed a captive roc-bird to flap its wings and waft hugeclouds of the dust into the air, where it caused madnessclose by, technicolor hailstorms farther distant, and magicfor the rest of Xanth as it diluted to natural backgroundintensity. If the villagers did not perform this service, themagic dust would tend to clump, and the magic would beunevenly distributed, causing all manner of problems.

Certainly the Magic Dusters believed all this, and la-bored most diligently to facilitate the proper and evenspreading of the dust. Yet Smash's Eye Queue-infectedbrain obnoxiously conjured caveats, questioning the reali-ties the villagers lived by.

If the magic really came from the dust, it should endureas long as the dust did, fading only slowly as the dust woreout. Yet at the Time of No Magic, all Xanth had beenrendered Mundane instantly. That had happened just be-fore Smash himself had been whelped, but his parents hadtold him all about it. They had considered it rather ro-mantic, perhaps even a signal of their love. Crunch had losthis great strength in that time, but other creatures had beenaffected far more, and many had died. Then the magichad returned, as suddenly as it had departed, and Xanthhad been as it was before. There had been no great move-ments of dust then, no dust storms. That suggested that themagic of Xanth was independent of the dust.

The dust came from below, and if it brought the magic,the nether regions must be more magical than the surface.Tandy had lived below, yet she seemed normal. She did noteven appear to have a magic talent. So how could the magicbe concentrated below?

But Smash decided not to raise these questions openly,as they would only make things awkward for the villagers.And perhaps the belief of the Dusters was right and hisvine-sponsored objections were wrong. After all, what

could a Queue of Eyes understand of the basic nature ofXanth?

His thought turned to a bypath. A magic talent—thatmust be what Tandy was questing for! He, as an ogre, wasfortunate; ogres had strength as their talent. When Smashhad gone to Mundania, outside the magic, ambience ofXanth, he had lost his strength and his rhyme, distress-ingly. Now he had lost his rhymes and his naivete, but nothis strength.

Was the infliction of the curse of the Eye Queue reallyso bad? There were indeed pleasures in the insights thisartificial intelligence afforded him. Yet ogres were sup-posed to be stupid; he felt sadly out of place.

Smash decided to keep quiet, most of the time, and letTandy do the talking. He might no longer be a proper ogrein outlook, but at least he could seem like an ogre. If hegenerated an illusion of continuing stupidity, perhaps intime he would achieve it again. Certainly this was worththe hope. Meanwhile, his shame would remain mostly se-cret.

Ogre, Ogre                      47

Chapter 4. Catastrophe

In the morning they walked along an old ground-bound path to the small lake that contained the Siren'sisle. It was pretty country, with few immediate hazards,and so Smash found it dull, while Tandy liked it very well.

The Siren turned out to be a mature mermaid who hadprobably been stunning in her youth and was not too farfrom it even now. She evidently survived by fishing andseemed satisfied with her lot, or more correctly, her pond.

"We bring greetings from your sister the Gorgon,"Tandy called as they crossed the path over the water to theisland.

Immediately the mermaid was interested. She emergedfrom the water and changed to human form—her fish-tailsimply split into two well-formed legs—and came to meetthem, still changing. She had been nude in the water, but ithardly mattered since she was a fish below the waist. Butas she dried, the scales that had covered her tail convertedto a scale-sequin dress that nudged up to cover the upperportion of her torso. For a reason that had never been clearto Smash, it was all right for a mermaid to show herbreasts, but not all right for a human woman to do thesame. The finny part of her flukes became small shoes. Itwas minor but convenient magic; after all, Smash thought,she might otherwise get cold feet. "My sister!" she ex-claimed, her newly covered bosom heaving. "How is shedoing?"

"Well, she's married to the Good Magician Humfrey—"

"Oh, yes, I had news of thati But how is she recently?"

"Recently?" Tandy's brow furrowed.

46

Smash caught on to the nature of the Siren's question."She wants to know whether the Gorgon is pregnant," hemurmured.

Tandy was startled. "Oh—I don't know about that. Idon't think so. But she does seem happy, and so does theMagician."

The Siren frowned. "I'm so glad she found hers. I wish Ihad found mine." And Smash now perceived, from thisdose range and the magnification of his interpretive intel-lect, that the Siren was not happy at all. She bad lost hercompelling magic twenty years ago and had very little left

Such things had not before been concerns of Smash's.Ogres hardly cared about the nuances of the lifestyles ofnymphal creatures. Now, thanks to the curse of the EyeQueue, Smash felt the Siren's problem, and felt the need toalleviate it. "We are going to Lake Ogre-Chobee. Perhaps ifyou went there, you would find yours."

The Siren brightened. "That's possible."

"But we are having trouble finding the way," he said."The Madness intercedes."

"It's a nuisance," the' Siren agreed. "But there are waysaround it"

"We would like to know of one."

"Well, there's the catapult. Yet you have to pay the cat'sprice."

"What is the cat's price?" Tandy asked warily. "If it's akind of demon, we might not like it."

"It likes catnip—and that's not easy to get"

"Smash could get it," Tandy said brightly. "He fought atangle tree and a pride of ant-lions."

"Well, he's an ogre," the Siren agreed matter-of-factly."That sort of thing is routine for them."

"Why don't you come with us and show us where thecatnip is?" Tandy suggested. "Then we can all go to thecatapult and on to Lake Ogre-Chobee."

The Siren considered. "I admit I don't seem to be ac-complishing much here. I never thought I'd travel with anogrel" She faced Smash. "Are you tame? I've beard somebad things about ogres—"

"They're all true!" Smash agreed. "Ogres are the worstbrutes on two legs. But I was raised in the environs ofCastle Roogna, so am relatively civilized."

48 Ogre, Ogre

"He's really very nice, when you get to know him,"Tandy said. "He doesn't crunch the bones of friends."

"I'll risk it," the Siren decided. "I'll lead you to the cat-nip." She adjusted her dress, packed a few fish for nibblingon the way, and set oft, leading them east of the lake.

The catnip grew in a section of the jungle separated by afiercely flowing stream. They had to use a narrow catwalkpast a cataract that was guarded by a catamount. "Don'tfall into the water," the Siren warned. "It's a catalyst thatwill give you catarrh, catatonia, and catalepsy."

"I don't understand," Tandy said nervously. "Is thatbad?"

"A catalyst is a substance that facilitates change," Smashexplained, drawing on his new Eye Queue intellect. "In thecase of our living flesh, this is likely to mean deteriorationand decay such as catarrh, which is severe mflammationinside the nose, catatonia, which is stupor, and catalepsy,which is loss of motion and speechlessness. We had betterstay out of this water; it is unlikely to be healthy."

"Yes, unlikely," Tandy agreed faintly. "But the cata-mount is on the catwalk! It will throw us off."

"Oh, I wouldn't be concerned about that," Smash said.He strode out on the catwalk. It dipped and swayed underhis mass, but he had the sure balance of his primitive kindand proceeded with confidence.

"No violence!" Tandy pleaded.

The catamount was a large reddish feline with longwhiskers and big paws. It snarled and stalked towardSmash, its tail swishing back and forth.

No violence?

A fright would have been fun, but Smash realized nowthat the girls would worry, so he used his intellect to pon-der on a peaceful option. What about the one he had usedon the moat-monster at the Good Magician's castle? "Iwant to show you something, kitty," he said. He leanedforward and held out his right hand. The catamount pauseddistrustfully.

Smash carefully closed his gauntleted hamflngers into ahuge, gleaming fist. Shafts of sunlight struck down to elicitnew gleams as Smash slowly rotated his fist. It was amaz-ing how each shaft knew exactly where to go!

Smash nudged this metallic hamfist under the cata-

Ogre, Ogre                      49

mount's nose. "Now kitty," he said quietly, "if you do notvacate this path expeditiously, you are apt to have a closerencounter with this extremity. Does this eventuality meetwith your approval?"

The feline's ears twitched as if it suffered indigestion; itseemed to have a problem with the vocabulary. It consid-ered the extremity. The fist sent another barrage of glintsof reflected sunlight out, seeming to grow larger. The ogrestood perfectly balanced and at ease, muscles bulging onlyslightly, fur lying almost unruffled. After a moment, snarl-ing ungraciously, the catamount decided not to dispute thepath this time. It backed away.

Well, well. Smash thought. His bluff had worked—nowthat he had the wit to bluff. Of course, it would have beenfun to hurl the catamount into the water below and seewhat happened to it, but that pleasure was not to be, thistime.

A catbird sailed down out of the sky. It had the body ofa crow and the head of a cat. "Meow!" it scolded the cata-mount, and issued a resounding catcall. Then it wheeled onSmash, claws extended cat-as-catch-can.

The ogre's mitt moved swiftly. The hamfingers caughtthe catbird, who screeched piteously. Smash brought itdown, pulled out one large tailfeather, and lofted the crea-ture away. The catbird flew awkwardly, its rudder mal-functioning. The fight had been taken out of it, along withmuch of the flight

A catfish protested from below. It lifted its cat-headfrom the flowing water and yowled. Its voice had a nasalquality; the creature did indeed seem to be suffering fromcatarrh and perhaps catalepsy, though probably it had builtup a certain immunity to the curses of the water. Smashhurled the feather down into its mouth. The catfish chokedand sneezed, disappearing.

Now Smash, Tandy, and the Siren crossed without imped-iment. "Sometimes it's really handy having an ogrealong," Tandy remarked. She seemed to have swung fromabsolute distrust to absolute support, and Smash was notdispleased.

The path led through a field of cattails growing in cat-sup where cattle grazed, fattening up in case some cata-clysm came. It terminated at a catacomb. "The catnip

50

Ogre, Ogre

grows in there," the Siren said, pointing to the teeth of thecomb that barred the entrance. "But it's dangerous to en-ter, because if the cataclysm comes, the cattle willstampede into it."

"Then I will go alone," Smash said. He brushed thecomb aside and marched on down. The way soon becamedark, but ogres had good night vision, so he wasn't much

bothered.

"Don't invite catastrophe!" the Siren called after him.

"I certainly hope not," Smash called back, though intruth he wouldn't have minded a little of that to makethings interesting. "I will be pusillanimously careful."

Deep inside the cave, he found a garden of pleasantlyscented, mintlike plants with felinely furry leaves. Eachhad a spike of blue flowers. These must be the catnips.

Smash took hold of one and pulled it up by the roots,being uncertain which part of the plant he needed, andstuffed it into his bag. The flowers nipped at him, butlacked the power even to be annoying. He grabbed andcrammed more plants, until he felt he had enough.

He turned to depart—and spied a dimly glowing objectIt was set in the cave wall beside the exit, framed in stoneset with yellow cat's-eye gems. It was a furry hump with atail descending from it: evidently the posterior of some sortof feline. A pussy-willow? No, too large for that. Smashrecalled reference to one of the barbarian customs of theMundanes, in which they killed animals and mounted theirheads on walls. That was stupid—perfectly edible headsgoing to waste! Someone must have done the same for this

cat's rear.

Smash considered, then decided to take the trophy along.It certainly wasn't doing any good here in the dark. Per-haps the girls would like to see it. Smash realized that itwas a measure of the degradation foisted on him by theEye Queue that he even thought of showing something in-teresting to others, but he was stuck with it.

He reached out to grab the stone frame. The cats-eyesblinked wamingly. The thing was firmly set, so he appliedforce. The frame ripped out of the wall—and the roof col-lapsed.

Puzzled, Smash put one fist up over his head. The rockfell on this and cracked apart, piling up on either side.

Ogre, Ogre                      51

Smash climbed up through the rubble, toting his bag ofplants, but was unable to bring the posterior-trophy. In amoment he reached daylight.

"Oh, you're all right!" Tandy cried. "I was so afraid—"

"Rockfalls can't hurt ogres," Smash said. "I tried to takea trophy, but the roof fell in." He dusted himself off.

"A trophy?" Tandy asked blankly.

"The rear end of some kind of cat, mounted in the wall."

"That was the catastrophe!" the Siren cried. "I told younot to invite it!"

Catastrophe—a trophy of the rear of a cat. Now Smashunderstood. He had not properly applied his new intelli-gence, and had done considerable damage to the catnipgarden as a result. He would try to be more careful in thefuture. As long as he was cursed with intellect, he might aswell use it.

"I had better clear the rocks out of the garden," Smashsaid. This, too, was an un-ogrish sentiment, but the EyeQueue and the presence of the girls seemed to have thateffect on him.

"No, don't bother," the Siren said. "You wouldn't knowhow to set it right. The caterpillar will take care of thatafter we leave. It likes to push rocks around."

They crossed the catwalk past the cataract again andproceeded to the catapult. This was a feline creature thesize of a small sphinx, crouched in a clearing. Its tail ex-panded into a kind of netting at the end, large enough for aboulder to rest on. There was a basket nearby, just thatsize.

The Siren approached the catapult. "Will you hurl us toLake Ogre-Chobee, please?" she asked. "We have somecatnip for you."

The cat brightened. It nodded its whiskered head. Theylaid the catnip plants down before it, then moved the bas-ket to the expanded tail. The three of them climbed in anddrew the wicker lid over, enclosing themselves.

The cat sniffed the catnip. Its tail stiffened ecstatically.Then it nipped the catnip. As the potent stuff took effect,the tail suddenly sprang up, carrying the basket along. Sud-denly the party of three was flying.

They looked out between the slats. Xanth was cruisingby beneath them, all green and blue and yellow. There

52 Ogre, Ogre

were scattered, low-hanging clouds around them, white be-low, all other colors above, where they couldn't be seenfrom the ground. Some were rainclouds, shaped like pools,brimming with water. Stray birds were taking baths inthem, and flying fish were taking breathers there, too. Thebasket clipped the edge of oae of these rainclouds and torea hole in it; the water poured out in a horrendous leak.There was an angry uproar from below as the unscheduleddeluge splashed on the forest. But this was the Region ofMadness anyway; no one would be able to prove the differ-ence.

Now it occurred to Smash to wonder about their descent.They had risen smoothly enough, but the fall might be lesscomfortable.

Then some sort of material popped out of the lid of thebasket. It spread into a huge canopy that caught the airmagically and held back the basket. The descent becameslow, and they landed by the shore of Lake Ogre-Chobee.

They opened the basket and stepped out. "That wasfuni" Tandy exclaimed girlishly. "But how will the cata-pult get its basket back?"

An orange creature hurried up, vaguely catlike. "I'll takethat," it said.

"Who are you?" Tandy asked.

"I am the agent of this region. It is my job to see thatthings get where they belong. The catapult has a contractfor the return of its baskets."

"Oh. Then you had better take it. But I don't know howyou'll be able to carry that big basket through that thickjungle, or past the Region of Madness."

"No problem. I'm half mad already." The orange agentpicked up the basket and trotted north. The vegetationwilted and died in the creature's vicinity, making a clearpath.

"Oh—that's its magic talent," Tandy said. "Agent Or-ange kills plants."

They turned to Lake Ogre-Chobee. It was a fine blueexpanse of water with a whirlpool in the center. "Don't gothere," the Siren cautioned. "The curse-fiends live there."

"What is wrong with the curse-fiends?" Smash asked."My mother was one."

The Siren turned her gaze on him, startled. "Oh—I un-

Ogre, Ogre                      53

derstood you were an ogre. The/curse-fiends are of humanderivation. I didn't mean to—"

"My mother is an actress. She had to play the part of anogress in an adaptation of Prince Charming, a Mundanetale. Naturally she was the ingenue."

"Naturally," the Siren agreed faintly.

"But my father Crunch happened onto the set, inno-cently looking for bones to crunch, and spied her and wasinstantly smitten by her horribleness and carried her away.Naturally she married him."

"Yes, of course," the Siren agreed, looking wan. "I amjealous of her fortune. I'm of human derivation myself."

"The curse-fiends fired off a great curse that killed ahuge forest," Smash continued. "But my parents escapedthe curse by becoming vegetarians. Most ogres crunchbones, so this confused the curse and caused it to misfire."

"You were raised in a non-bone-crunching home!"Tandy exclaimed.

"I'm still an ogre," he said defensively.

"I'm glad it worked out so well," the Siren said. "But Ithink it would be wise to avoid the curse-fiends. Theymight not appreciate your position."

"I suppose so," Smash admitted. "But they are excellentactors. No one ever confused my mother for a humanbeing."

"I'm sure they didn't," the Siren agreed. "I saw one ofthe curse-fiends' plays once. It was very well done. But itcan be awkward associating with someone who throws acurse when aggravated."

Smash laughed. "It certainly can be! I acted un-ogrishonce, letting a wyvem back me off from an emerald I hadfound—"

"My mother set that emerald in place!" Tandy ex-claimed.

"And my mother threw a curse at me," he continued. "Itscorched the ground at my feet and knocked me on myhead. I never let any monster back me off again!"

"That was cruel," Tandy said. "She shouldn't havecursed you."

"Cruel? Of course not. It was ogre love, the only kindour kind understands. She cursed my father once, and it

54

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Ogre, Ogre

55

was two days before he recovered, and the smile never lefthis face."

"Well, I don't know," Tandy said, and she seemed un-usually sober. Did she have some connection to the curse-fiends? Smash filed the notion for future reference.

They walked around a portion of Lake Ogre-Chobee,trying not to attract attention. There were no ogres in evi-dence, and no traces of their presence—no broken-off treesor fragmented boulders or flat-stomped ground.

There seemed to be no threats, either; the entire lakewas girded, as far as they could see, by a pleasant littlebeach, and the water was clear and free of monsters. Evi-dently the curse-fiends had driven away anything danger-ous.

"Look at the noses!" Tandy cried, pointing across thewater. Smash looked. There were scores of nostrils swim-ming in pairs toward the shore, making little waves. Asthey drew near, he saw that the nostrils were the visibletips of more extensive snouts, which continued on into longreptilian bodies.

"Oh—the chobees," the Siren said, relaxing. "They'remostly harmless. Chobees aren't related to other kinds ofbees; they don't sting. Once in a while one strays up to mylake."

"But what big teeth they have!" Tandy said.

"They're imitation, teeth, soft as pillows."

A chobee scrambled out onto the beach. It had short, fat,green legs and a green corrugated skin. The Siren petted iton the head, and the chobee grinned. She touched one ofits teeth, and the tooth bent like rubber, snapping back intoplace when released.

But Smash had a nagging doubt. "I remember somethingmy father said about the chobees. Most of them are inno-cent, but some—"

"Oh, yes, that's right," the Siren agreed. "A few, a veryfew, have real teeth. Those kind are dangerous."

"Let's stay away from the bad ones, then," Tandy said."What do they look like?"

"I don't know," the Siren admitted.

"They look just like the nice ones," Smash said slowly,dredging his memory.

"But then any of these could be a bad one," Tandy said,alarmed.

"True," Smash agreed. "Unless the curse-fiends got ridof them."

"How could the curse-fiends tell the difference, if wecan't?" Tandy asked.

"If a chobee eats a curse-fiend, it's probably a bad one,"the Siren said, smiling obscurely.

"Do we need to tell the chobees apart the same way?"Tandy asked worriedly.

The Siren laughed musically. Her voice was only ashadow of what it must have been when she had her luringmagic, but it remained evocative. "Of course not, dear.Let's avoid them all." That seemed easy enough to do, asthe three of them could walk faster than the reptiles could.Soon the chobees gave up the chase and nosed back intothe water, where they buzzed away toward the deeper por-tions of the lake. Tandy watched the wakes their nostrilsleft with relief.

At one point the lake become irregular, branching outinto a satellite lake that was especially pretty. A partialcauseway crossed the narrow connection between the largeand small lakes. "I'll wade across!" Smash said, delightingin the chance to indulge in some splashing.

"I don't know," Tandy said. "The nice paths can be dan-gerous." She had learned from her experience with the tan-gler and the ant-lions; now she distrusted all the easy ways.

"I 'will explore the water," the Siren said. "I will be ableto tell very quickly whether there are dangerous watercreatures near. Besides, I'm hungry; I need to catch somefish." She slid into the small lake, her legs converting tothe sleekly scaled tail, her dress fading out.

"If you find a monster, send it my way," Smash called."I'm hungry, too!"

She smiled and dived below-the surface, a bare-breastedmemymph swimming with marvelous facility. In a mo-ment her head popped up, tresses glistening. "No monstershere!" she called. "Not even any chobees. I believe thatcauseway is safe; I find no pitfalls there."

That was all Smash needed. "Too bad," he muttered. Hewaded in, sending a huge splay of water to either side.

56 Ogre, Ogre

But Tandy remained hesitant. "I think I'll just walkaround it," she said.

"Good enough!" Smash agreed, and forged on intodeeper water. The causeway dropped lower, 'but neverdeeper than chest height on him. He conjectured that itmight have been constructed by the curse-fiends to preventlarge sea monsters from passing; they preferred deep waterand avoided shallows. Maybe the smaller lake had been de-veloped as a resort region. This suggested that there couldbe monsters in Lake Ogre-Chobee; they just happened to beelsewhere at the moment. Maybe they represented an addi-tional protection for the fiends, converting the whole of thelarge lake into a kind of moat. It really didn't matter, sincehe had no business with the curse-fiends. After all, theyhad not let his mother go willingly to marry his father. Shehad had no further contact with her people after she hadtaken up with Crunch the Ogre, and it occurred to Smashthat this could not have made her feel good. So his attitudetoward the fiends was guarded; he would not try to avoidthem, but neither would he try to seek them out. Neutralitywas the watchword. He had never thought this out be-fore—but he had not suffered the curse of the Eye Queuebefore, either. He still hoped to find some way to be rid ofit, as these frequent efforts of thought were not conduciveto proper ogrish behavior.

He glanced across the water of the little lake. Tandy waspicking her way along the beach, looking very small. Hefelt un-ogrishly protective toward her—but, of course, thiswas his service to the Good Magician. Ogres were grossand violent, but they kept their word. Also, the Eye Queuecurse lent him an additional perception of the virtue of anethical standard. It was a bit like physical strength; theideal was to be strong in all respects, ethical as well asphysical. And Tandy certainly needed protection. Besideswhich, she was a nice girl. He wondered what she waslooking for in life and how it related to his journey to seekthe Ancestral Ogres. Had old Magician Humfrey finallylost his magic, and had to foist Tandy off on an ogre mlieu of a genuine Answer? Smash hoped not, but he had toentertain the possibility. Suppose there was in fact no An-swer for Tandy—or for himself?

Smash had no ready answer for that, even with his un-

Ogre, Ogre                      57

wanted new intelligence, so had to let the thought lapse.But it was disquieting. High intelligence, it seemed, posedas many questions as it answered; being smart was not nec-essarily any solution to life's problems. It was much easierto be strong and stupid, bashing things out of the way with-out concern for the consequences. Disquiet was no properfeeling for an ogre.

Now he got down in the water and splashed with alllimbs. This was proper ogre fun! The spray went up in agreat cloud, surrounding the sun and causing its light tofragment into a magic halo. The whole effect was so lovelythat he continued splashing violently until pleasantlywinded. When he stopped, he discovered that the waterlevel of the small lake had dropped substantially, and thesun was hastening across the sky to get out of the way,severely dimmed by all the water that had splashed on it.

But his thorough washing did not clear the Eye Queuefrom the fur of his head. Somehow the Queue had sunkinto his brain, and the braided Eyes were providing himnew visions of many kinds. It would be hard indeed to getthose Eyes out again.

At last he waded out at the far side. The Siren swam up,converted her tail to legs, and joined him on the warmbeach. "You made quite a splash. Smash," she said. "Had Inot known better, I would have supposed a thunderstormwas forming."

"That good!" he agreed, well satisfied. Of course itwasn't all good; he was now unconscionably clean. But afew good rolls in the dirt would take care of that.

"That bad," the Siren said with a smile.

He studied her as she gleamed wetly, her scale-suitcreeping up to cover the fullness of her front. She seemed,   to be turning younger, though this might be inconsequentiali ^  illusion. "I think the^swim was good for you, too, Siren.You look splendid." Privately, he was amazed at his words;

she did look splendid, and her affinity to the voluptuous Gor-gon was increasingly evident, but no ordinary ogre wouldhave noticed, let alone complimented her in the fashion ofa human being. The curse of the Queue was still spreading!

"I do feel better," she agreed. "But it's not just the swim.It's the companionship. I have lived alone for too long; now

58 Ogre, Ogre Ogre, Ogre 59

that I have company, however temporarily, my youth andhealth are returning."

So that explained it! People of human stock had needfor the association of other people. This was one of theways in which ogres differed from human beings. Ogresneeded nobody, not even other ogres. Except to marry.

He looked again at the Siren. Her nymphlike beautywould have dazzled a man and led him to thoughts ofmoonlight and gallivanting. Smash, however, was an ogre;

full breasts and smoothly fleshed limbs appealed to himonly aesthetically—-and even that was a mere product ofthe Eye Queue. An uncursed ogre would simply have be-come hungry at the sight of such flesh.

Which reminded him—he needed something to eat. Hechecked around for edibles and spied some ripe bananapeppers. He stuffed handfuls of them into his mouth.

Something nagged him as he chewed. Flesh—female—hunger—ah, now he had it. A girl in danger of being eaten."Where's Tandy?" he asked.

"I haven't seen her, Smash," the Siren said, her fairbrow furrowing. "She should be here by now, shouldn'tshe? We had better go look for her, in case—well, let's justsee. I'll swim; you check the beach."

"Agreed." Smash crammed another double fistful ofpeppers into his face and started around the beach, con-cerned. He blamed himself now for his selfish carelessness.He knew that Tandy was unfamiliar with the surface ofXanth, liable to fall into the simplest trap. If somethinghad happened to her—

"I find nothing here," the Siren called from the water."Maybe she went off the beach for a matter of hygiene."

Good notion. Smash checked the tangled vines beyondthe beach—and there, in due course, he found Tandy. "Hi-hol" he called to her, waving a hamhand.

Tandy did not respond. She was kneeling on the turf,looking at something. "Are you all right?" Smash asked,worry building up like a sudden storm. But the girl neithermoved nor answered.

The Siren came out of the water, dripping and changingin the effective way she had, and joined Smash. "Oh—she's fallen prey to a hypnogourd."

A hypnogourd. Smash remembered encountering thatfruit before. Anyone who peeked in the peephole of such agourd remained mesmerized until some third party brokethe connection. Naturally Tandy had not been aware ofthis. So she had peeked, being girlishly curious—and re-mained frozen there.

Gently, the Siren removed the gourd, breaking the con-nection. Tandy blinked and shook her head. But her eyesdid not quite focus. Her features coalesced into an expres-sion of vacant, continuing horror.

"Hey, come out of it, dear," the Siren said. "The badvision is over. It ended when you lost contact with thegourd. Everything's all right."

Yet the girl seemed numb. The Siren shook her, but stillTandy did not respond.

"Maybe it's like the Eye Queue," Smash said. "It stays inthe mind until removed."

"The gourds aren't usually that way," the Siren said,perplexed. "Of course, I have not had much personal expe-rience with them, since I have lived alone; there's no one tobreak the trance for me, so I have stayed clear. But I met aman once, a Mundane, back when I was able to lure menwith my music. He said the gourds were like computergames—that seems to be something he knew about in Mun-dania, one of their forms of magic—only more compelling.He said some people got hooked worse than others."

"Tandy was raised in the caves. She has no experiencewith most of Xanth. She must be susceptible. Whatever shesaw in there maintains its grip on her mind."

"That must be it. Usually people have no memory ofwhat they see inside, but maybe that varies also. That sameMundane spoke of acidheads, which I think are creatureswhose heads—well, I can't quite visualize that. But itseems they suffered flashbacks of their mad dreams aftertheir heads were back in normal shape. Maybe Tandy is—"

"I'll go into that gourd and destroy whatever is botheringher," Smash said. "Then she'll be free."

"Smash, you may not have your body in there! I havenever looked into a gourd, but I don't think the same rulesapply as those we know. You could get caught there, too. Itcould be catastrophe."

60 Ogre, Ogre

"I will be more careful to avoid that trophy, this time,"Smash said with an ogrish grimace. He applied his eye tothe peephole.

He was in a world of black and white. He stood before ablack wooden door set in a white house. There was nosound at all, and the air was chill. Faintly ominous vibra-tions wafted in from the near distance. There was the dif-fuse odor of spoiling carrion.

Smash licked bis lips. Carrion always made him hungry.But he did not trust this situation. Tandy was not here, ofcourse, and he saw nothing that could account for her con-dition. Nothing to frighten or horrify a person. He decidedto leave.

However, he perceived no way out. He had arrived full-formed within this scene; there was no obvious exit. Hewas locked into this vision—unless he had entered throughthis door and turned about to face it without realizing, andcould depart through it. Doors generally did lead from oneplace to another.

He took hold of the black metal doorknob. The thingzapped him with a small bolt of lightning. He tried to letgo, but his hand was locked on. He wore no gauntlets; evi-dently he had left them behind. The electric pain pulsedthrough his fingers, locking the muscles clenched with itsspecial magic. There was a wash of pain, literally; his blackhand was now glowing with red color, in stark contrastwith the monochrome of the rest of the scene.

Smash yanked hard on the knob. The entire door rippedoff its hinges. The pain stopped, the red color faded, hisfingers relaxed at last, and he hurled the door away behindhim.

Before him was a long, blank hall penetrating the som-ber house. From the depths of it came a horrendous groan.This did not seem to be the way out; he was sure he hadnot walked any great distance inside the gourd. But it didseem pleasant enough, and was the only way that offered.Smash stepped inside.

A chill draft rustled the fur on his legs. The odor ofputrefaction intensified. The floor shuddered as it took hisweight. There was another groan.

Smash strode forward, impatient to get out of this inter-estingly drear but pointless place, worried about Tandy. He

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needed to consult with the Siren, to work out some strategyby which he might find whatever had scared Tandy anddeal with it. Otherwise he would have felt free to enjoy thefurther entertainments of this house. Had he realized whatkind of scene was inside the gourd, he would have enteredit years ago.

Something flickered before him. Smash squinted, andsaw it was a ghost. "You trapped, too?" he asked sympa-thetically, and walked through it.

The ghost made an angry moan and flickered to hisfrontside again. "Boooooo!" it booooooed.

Smash paused. Was this creature trying to tell bun some-thing? He had known very few ghosts, as they did not ordi-narily associate with vgres. There were several at CastleRoogna, attending to routine hauntings. "Do I know you?"he asked. "Do we have any mutual acquaintances?"

"Yoowwelll" the ghost yowded, its hollow eyes flashingdarkness,

"I'd help you if I could, but I'm lost myself," Smash saidapologetically, and brushed on through it again. The ghost,disgusted for some obscure reason, faded away.

The passage narrowed. This was no illusion; the wallswere closing on either side, squeezing together. Smashdidn't like to be crowded, so he put one hamhand on eachwall and pushed outward, exerting ogre force. Somethingsnapped; then the walls slid apart and lay tilted at slightlyodd angles. It would probably be a long time before theytried to push another ogre around!

At the end of the hall was a rickety staircase leading up.Smash pressed one hairy bare foot on the lowest step andshoved down, testing it. The step bowed and squeaked pit-eously, but supported his weight. Smash took anotherstep—and suddenly the entire stairway began to move,carrying him upward. Magic stairs! What would this enjoy-able place think of next?

The stairs accelerated. Faster and faster they went, mak-ing the dank air breeze past Smash's face. At the top of theflight they ended abruptly, and he went sailing out intoblank space.

Ogres liked lots of violent things, hut were not phenome-nally partial to falling. However, they weren't unduly con-cerned about it, either. Smash stiffened his legs. In a mo-

62 Ogre, Ogre

ment he landed on hard concrete. Naturally it fracturedunder the impact of his feet. He stepped out of the nibbleand looked about.

He seemed to be in some sort of deep well, or oubliette.The circular wall narrowed above, making climbing outdifficult. Then a shape appeared in silhouette, holding abig stone over its head. The figure had horns and lookedlike a demon. Smash was not especially partial to demons,but he greeted this one courteously enough. "Up yours,devil!" he called.

The demon dropped the stone down the well. Smash sawthe dark shape looming, but had no room to step out of theway.

Then light flared. Smash blinked. It was broad daylightin the forest of Xanth. "Are you all right?" the Siren asked."I didn't dare let you stay out too long."

"I am all right," Smash said. "How is Tandy?"

"Unchanged, I'm afraid. Smash, I don't think you candestroy what is bothering her, because the horror is now inher mind. We could smash the gourd and it still wouldn'thelp her."

Smash considered. His skull no longer heated up whenhe did that. "I believe you are correct. I saw nothing reallyalarming in there. Perhaps I should go into the gourd withher and show her that it's not so bad."

The Siren frowned. "I suspect ogres have different defi-nitions of bad. Just what happened in there?"

"Only a haunted house. Shocking doorknob. Ghost.Squeezing walls—I suppose those could have been awk-ward for a human person. Moving stairs. A demon drop-ping a rock down a well."

"Why would a demon do that?"

"I don't know. I happened to be below at the time.Maybe it didn't like my greeting."

Tandy stirred. Her eyes swung loosely about. Her lipspursed flaccidly. She looked disturbingly like a ghost. "No,no house, no demon. A graveyard . . ." She lapsed intostaring, her mouth beginning to drool.

"Evidently you had separate visions," the Siren said, us-ing a puff from a puffball growing nearby to clean up thegirl's face. "That complicates it."

Ogre, Ogre                      63

"Maybe if we go in together, we'll share a vision,"Smash conjectured.

"But there is only one peephole."

Smash poked his littlest hamfinger into the rind of thegourd. "Two, now."

"You ogres are so practical!"

They set the gourd before Tandy, who immediatelypeered into the first peephole. Then Smash squatted so thathe could peer into the second.

He was back in the well. The rock was plunging at hishead. Hastily he raised a fist, since he didn't want a head-ache. The rock shattered on the fist, falling around him inthe form of fragments, pebbles, and gravel. So much forthat. If the demon would just drop a few more stonesdown. Smash would soon have this well filled up with rub-ble and could step out.

But the demon did not reappear. Too bad. Smash lookedaround the gloom. Tandy was not with him. He was in thesame vision he had left, picking it up in the same momenthe had left it He was using a different peephole, but thatdidn't seem to matter. Probably Tandy was back in heroriginal vision, at the same point it had been interrupted,getting scared by whatever had scared her before. Itseemed the gourd programmed each vision separately.

However, it was all the same gourd. Tandy had to besomewhere in here, and he intended to find her, rescue herfrom her horror, and smash that horror into a quiveringpulp so it wouldn't bother her again. All he had to do wasmake a sufficient search.

He took hold of a stone in the wall of the well andyanked it out. Three more stones fell out with it. Smashtook another; this time five more fell. This old well was notwell constructed! He stood on these and drew out morestones. The well filled in beneath him steadily, and beforelong he was back at the surface. There was no sign what-soever of the demon who had dropped the first rock onhim. That was just as well, for Smash might have treatedthat demon a trifle unkindly, perhaps snapping its tail likea rubber band and launching the creature on a flight to themoon. The least that demon could have done was to stayaround long enough to drop a few more useful bouldersdown the well.

64 Ogre, Ogre

Now he stood in a chamber surrounded by doors. Heheard a faint, despairing scream. Tandy!

He went to the nearest door and grasped the knob. Itshocked him, so he ripped the door out of its socket andthrew it away. The room inside was a bare chamber: afalse lead. He tried the next door, got shocked again, andripped it out, too. Another bare chamber. He went to thethird door—and it didn't shock him. The doors were leam-ingi He opened this one gently. But it led only to anotherdecoy chamber.

Finally he opened one that showed an outdoor walk. Hehurried down this, hurdling a square that he recognized asa covered pitfall—ogres naturally knew about such things,having had centuries of ancestral experience avoiding suchtraps set for them by foolish men—and emerged into awindy graveyard.

Battered gravestones were all around, marking sunkengraves. Some stones tilted forward precariously, as if tryingto peer into the cavities they demarked. It occurred toSmash that the buried bodies might have climbed out andgone elsewhere, accounting for the sunkenness of thegraves and the suspicions of the headstones, but this wasnot his concern.

The odor of carrion was stronger out here. Maybe someof the corpses had not been buried deep enough. A windcame up, cutting around the stone edges with dismal howl-ing. Smash breathed deeply, appreciating it, then concen-trated on the business at hand. Tandy!" he called. "Whereare you?" For she had said she was in a graveyard, and thismust be the place.

He heard a faint sobbing. Carefully he traced down thesource. It was slow work, because the sound was carried bythe wind, and the wind curved around the gravestones incold blue streams, searching out the best edges for makingmoaning tunes. But at last he found the huddled figure,cowering behind a white stone crypt.

"Tandy!" he repeated. "It's I. Smash, the tame ogre. Letme take you away from all this."

She looked up, pale with fright, as if hardly daring torecognize him. Her mouth opened, but only drool cameout.

He reached out to take her arm, to help her to her feet.

Ogre, Ogre                       65

But she was as limp as a rag doll and would not rise. Shejust continued sobbing. She seemed little different from herXanth self. Something was missing.

Smash considered. For once he was thankful for the EyeQueue, because now he could ponder without pain. Whatwould account for the girl's lethargy and misery? He hadthought it was fear, but now that he was here, she shouldhave no further cause for that. It was as if she had lostsomething vital, like eyesight or—

Or her soul. Suddenly Smash remembered how vulnera-ble souls could be, and knew that if anyone were likely toblunder into a soul-hazardous situation, Tandy was the one.She knew so little of the ways of Xanth! No wonder shewas desolate and empty.

"Your soul, Tandy," he said, holding her so that she hadto look into his face. "Where is it?"

Listlessly she nodded toward the crypt. Smash saw thatit had a heavy, tight stone door. Scrape marks on the dankground indicated it had recently been opened. She musthave gone inside, perhaps trying to escape the graveyard—and had been ejected without her soul.

"I will recover it," he said.

Now she bestirred herself enough to react. "No, no," shemoaned. "I am lost. Save yourself."

"I agreed to protect you," he reminded her. "I shall doit." He set her gently aside and addressed the crypt. Thedoor had no handle, but he knew how to deal with that. Heelevated his huge bare fist and smashed it brutally forwardinto the stone.

Ouch! Without his gauntlets, his hands were moretender. He could not safely apply his full force. But hisblow had accomplished its purpose; the stone door hadcracked marginally and jogged a smidgen outward. He ap-plied his homy fingernails and hauled the door unwillinglyopen.

A dark hole faced him. As his eyes adjusted, he saw awhite outline. It was the skeleton of a man. It reached forhim with bone-fingers.

Smash realized where the bodies in the sunken graveshad gone. They had been recruited for guard duty andwere walking about this crypt. But he was not in the moodfor nuisance. He grabbed the skeleton by the bones of its

arm and hauled it violently out of the crypt. The thingflew through the air and landed as a jumble of bones. Theogre proceeded on into the hole.

Other skeletons appeared, clustering about him, then-connections rattling. Smash treated them as he had thefirst, disconnecting their foot-bones from their leg-bonesand other bones, causing the bonepile to grow rapidly. Soonthe remaining skeletons reconsidered, not wishing to havehim roll their bones, and left him alone.

• Deep in the ground the ogre came to a dark coffin. Thesmell was mouth-wateringly awful; something really rottenwas in there. Was Tandy's soul in there, too? He picked upthe box and shook it.

"All right, all right\" a muffled voice came from thecoffin. "You made your point, ogre. You aren't afraid ofanything. What do you want?"

"Give back Tandy's soul," Smash said grimly.

"I can't do that, ogre," the box protested. "We made adeal. Her freedom for her soul. I let her out of this world; Ikeep her soul. That's the way we deal here; souls are thecurrency of this medium."

"The Siren let her out by removing the gourd," Smashargued. "She never had to pay."

"Coincidence. I permitted it, once the deal was struck.The negotiation is sealed."

Smash had lived and thought like an ogre a lot longerthan he had lived and thought intelligently. Now he re-verted to convenient old habits. He roared, picked up thecoffin, and hurled it against the wall. The box fell to thefloor, somewhat sprung, and several ceiling stones 'droppedon it. Nauseating goo dribbled from a crack in it. Dirtsifted down from the chamber wall to smooth the outlines.

"Maybe further negotiation is possible after all," thevoice from the coffin said, somewhat shaken. "Would youconsider trading souls?"

Smash readied his hamfist again. "Wait!" the voicecried, alarmed. It evidently wasn't used to dealing with realbrutes. "I merely collect souls; I don't have the authority togive them back. If you want the girl's soul now, your onlyoption is to trade."

The ogre considered. He might smash the coffin and itsoccupant to pieces, but that would not necessarily recover

the soul. If Tandy's soul were in there, it could get hurt inthe battering. So maybe it was better to bargain. "Tradewhat?"

"Another soul, of course. How about yours?"

This box thought he was a typically stupid ogre. "No."

"Well, someone else's. What about that buxom maturenymph out in Xanth, with the sometime fish-tail? Sheprobably has a luscious, bouncy, juicy soul."

Smash considered again. He decided, with an un-ogrishprecision of ethics, that he could not make any commit-ments on behalf of the Siren. "Not her soul. And notmine."

"Then the girl's soul must remain."

Smash got another whiff of the stench from the coffinand knew that Tandy's soul could not be allowed to rotthere. He still did not consider the deal by which the coffinhad gotten Tandy's soul to be valid. He stooped to pick upthe battered coffin again.

"Wait!" the voice cried. "There is one other option. Youcould accede to a lien."

The ogre paused. "Explain."

"A lien is a claim on the property of another as securityfor a debt," the coffin explained. "A lien on your soulwould mean that you agree to replace the girl's soul withanother soul—and if you don't, then your own soul is for-feit. But you keep your soul in the interim, or most of it."

It did seem to make sense. "How long an interim?"

"Shall we say thirty days?"

"Six months," Smash said. "You think I'm stupid?"

"I did think that," the coffin confessed. "After all, youare an ogre, and it is well known that the brains of ogresare mostly in their muscles. In fact, their brains are mostlymuscles."

"Not true," Smash said. "An ogre's skull is filled withbone, not muscle."

"I stand corrected. My skull is filled with necrosis. Howabout sixty days?"

"Four months."

"Split the difference: ninety days."

"Okay," Smash agreed. "But I don't agree you are enti-tled to keep any soul, just because you tricked an innocentgirl into trading it off for nothing."

"Are you sure you're an ogre? You don't sound likeone."

"I'm an ogre," Smash affirmed. "Would you like me tothrow you around some more to prove it?"

"That won't be necessary," the coffin said quickly. "Ifyou disagree with the assessment, you must deal with theboss: the Night Stallion. He makes decisions of policy."

"The Dark Horse?"

"Close enough; some do call him that. He governs theherd of nightmares."

It began to fall into place. "This is where the nightmareslive? By day, when they're not out delivering bad dreamsto sleepers?"

"Exactly. All the bad dreams are generated here in thegourd, from the raw material of people's fundamentalfears—loss, pain, death, shame, and the unknown. TheStallion decides where the dreams go, and the mares takethem there. Your girlfriend abused a mare, so it took a lienon her soul, and when she came here, that lien was calleddue. So her soul is forfeit, and now we have it, and onlythe Night Stallion can change that. Why don't we set youup for an appointment with the Stallion, and you can settlethis directly with him?"

"An appointment? When?"

"Well, he has a full calendar. Bad dreams aren't lightfancies, you know. There's a lot of evil in the world thatneeds recognition. It's a lot of work to craft each dreamcorrectly and designate it for exactly the right person at theright time. So the Stallion is quite busy. The first openingis six months hence."

"But my lien expires in three months!"

"You're smarter than the average ogre, for sure! Youmight force an earlier audience, but you'd have to find theStallion first. He certainly won't come to you within threemonths. I really wouldn't recommend the effort of locatinghim."

Smash considered again. It seemed to him that this cof-fin protested too profusely. Something was being concealedhere. Time for the ogre act again. "Perhaps so," he said."There is therefore no point in restraining my natural incli-nation for violence." He picked up a rock and crumpled itto chips and sand with one hand. He eyed the coffin.

"But I'm sure you can find him!" the box said quickly."All you have to do is seek the path of most resistance.That's all I can tell you, honest!"

Smash decided that he had gotten as much as he couldfrom the coffin. "Good enough. Give me the girl's soul,and I'll leave my three-month lien and meet the Stallionwhen I find him."

"Do you think a soul is something you can just carry inyour hand?" the coffin demanded derisively.

"Yes," Smash said. He contemplated his hand, slowlyclosing it into a brutishly ugly fist that hovered menacinglyover the coffin.

"Quite," the coffin agreed nervously, sweating anotherblob of stinking goo. The soul floated up, a luminescentglobe that passed right through the wood. Smash cupped itcarefully in his hand and tromped from the gloomy cham-ber. Neither coffin nor skeletons opposed him.

Tandy sat where she had been, the picture of hopelessgirlish misery. "Here is your soul," Smash said, and heldout the glowing globe.

Unbelievingly, she reached for it. The globe expanded ather touch, becoming a ghost-shape that quickly overlappedher body and merged. For an instant her entire bodyglowed, right through the tattered red dress; then she washer normal self. "Oh, Smash, you did it!" she exclaimed. "Ilove you! You recovered my soul from that awful corpse!"

"I promised to protect you," he said gruffly.

"How can I reward you?" She was actually pinching her-self, amazed by her restoration. Smash, too, was amazed;

he had not before appreciated how much difference a per-son's soul made.

^ "No reward," he insisted. "It's part of my job, my ser-vice for my Answer."

She considered. "Yes, I suppose. But how ever did youdo it? I thought there was no way—"

"I had to indulge my natural propensities slightly," headmitted, glancing at the pile of bones he had made. Thebones shuddered and settled lower, eager to avoid his atten-tion.

"Oh. I guess you were more terrible than the skeletonswere," she said.

"Naturally. That. is the nature of ogres. We're worse

70 Ogre, Ogre

than anything." Smash thought it best not to inform her ofthe actual nature of his deal. "Let's get out of here."

"Oh, yes! But how?"

That was another problem. He could bash through walls,but the force holding Tandy and himself inside the gourdwas intangible. "I think we'll have to wait for the Siren tofree us. All she has to do is move the gourd so we can'tlook into it any more, but she doesn't know when we'll befinished in here."

"Oh, I don't want to stay another minute in this horribleplace! If I had known what would happen when I peekedinto that funny little hole—"

"It's not a bad place, this," Smash said, trying to cheerher. "It can even be fun."

"Fun? In this awful graveyard?"

"Like this." Smash had spied a skeleton poking around agrave, perhaps looking for a new convert. He sneaked upbehind it. Ogres didn't have to shake the earth when theywalked; they did it because they enjoyed it. "B0001" hebellowed.

The skeleton leaped right out of its foot-bones and stum-bled away, terrified. Tandy had to smile. "You're prettyscary, all right, Smash," she agreed.

They settled down against a large gravestone. Tandyhuddled within the protection of the ogre's huge, hairyarm. It was the only place the poor little girl felt safe inthis region.

Chapter 5. Prints of Wails

I he Siren greeted them anxiously as they woketo the outer afternoon of Xanth. "I gave you an hourthis time, Smash; I just didn't dare wait longer," she said."Are you all right?"

"I have my soul back!" Tandy said brightly. "Smash gotit for me!"

The Siren had been looking her age, for her human stockcaused her to be less than immortal. Now relief was visiblyrestoring her youthfulness. "That's wonderful, dear," shesaid, hugging her. Then, looking at Smash, the Siren sob-ered again. "But usually souls can't be recovered withouthell to pay—ah, that is, some sort of quid pro quo. Are yousure—"

"I've got mine," Smash said jovially. "Such as it is. Ogresdo have souls, don't they?"

"As far as I know, only people of human derivation havesouls," the Siren said. "But all of those do, even if theirhuman ancestor was many generations ago, and so wethree qualify. I'm sure yours is as good as any, Smash, andperhaps better than some."

"It must be stronger and stupider, anyway," he said.

"I'm so glad it's all right," the Siren said, seeming notentirely convinced. She evidently suspected something, butchose not to make an issue of it at this time. Older femalestended to be less innocent than young ones, he realized, butalso more discreet.

They considered their situation. There seemed to be noogres and no merfolk at Lake Ogre-Chobee, despite itsname.

71

72 Ogre, Ogre

"Now I remember," Smash said. "The curse-fiendsdrove the ogres away. They migrated north to the Ogre-fen-Ogre Fen. I don't know why I didn't think of that be-fore!"

"Because you weren't cursed by the Eye Queue before,silly," Tandy said. "You weren't very smart. But that's allright; we'll just go up to the Ogre Fen and find your tribe."

"But that's the entire length of Xanth!" the Siren pro-tested. "Who knows what horrors lie along the way?"

"Yes, fun," Smash said.

"Funny, the Good Magician didn't remind you about theogres' change of residence," the Siren said. "Well, there'scertainly not much doing here. I would like to travel withyou a little longer, if I may, at least until I find a lakeinhabited by merfolk."

"Sure, come along, we like your company," Tandy saidimmediately, and Smash shrugged. It really made little dif-ference to him. He was partially preoccupied by his prob-lem with the lien on his soul. He would soon have to find apretext to go back into the gourd to search for the NightStallion and fight for his soul.

"But first, let's abolish this menace once and for all,"the Siren said. She picked up the hypnogourd and lifted ithigh overhead, throwing it violently to the ground.

"No!" Smash cried. But before he could move, the gourdhad smashed to earth. It fragmented into pinkish pulp,black seeds, and translucent juice. There was no sign of theworld he and Tandy had toured within it; the magic wasgone.

The ogre stood staring at the ruin. Now, how could hereturn to that world to settle his account? Somehow heknew his lien had not been abated by the destruction of thegourd; his avenue to that world had merely been closed. Itwould take time to manifest, but he knew he was in verybad trouble.

"Is something wrong?" the Siren asked. "Did you leavesomething in there?"

"It doesn't matter," Smash said brusquely. After all, shehad meant well, and there was nothing to be done now. Nopoint in upsetting the girls, no matter how privately satisfy-ing it might have been to rant and rave and stomp, ogre-

Ogre, Ogre                      73

style, until the whole forest and lake trembled and roiledwith reaction to the violence.

They trekked north through the variegated jungle andtundra and intemperate zones of Xanth. Most of the localflora and fauna left the party alone, wisely not wishing toantagonize an ogre. Upon occasion, some gnarled old bull-spruce would paw the earth with a branch-hoof and poke alimb-hom into the way, but a short, sharp blow withSmash's gauntleted fist taught such trees manners. Progresswas good.

They were just considering where to spend the night, when they heard something. There was a thin, barely audi-ble screaming, and a cacophony of ugly pantings, breath-ings, and raspings. "Something unpleasant is going on," theSiren said.

"I'll investigate," Smash said, glad for the chance for alittle relaxing violence. He tromped toward the commotion.

A crowd of multilegged things was chasing a little fairylass, who seemed to have hurt one of her gossamer wings.She was running this way and that, but wherever she went,creatures like squished caterpillars with tentacles moved toblock the way, dribbling hungry drool. The fairy wasscreaming with fright and horror, and the pursuers werereveling in her discomfort, playing cruelly with her beforeclosing for the kill.

"What's this?" Smash demanded.

One of the creatures turned toward him, though it washard to tell which side was its front. "Stay out of what doesnot concern you, trashface," it said insolently.

Now, Smash normally did not involve himself in whatdid not concern him, but his recent experience with Tandyin the gourd had sensitized him to the plight of small,pretty females in distress. Also, he did not like being told tostay out, despite the compliment to his face. Therefore hereacted with polite force. "Get out of here, you ghastly par-ody."

"Oho! the ghastly cried. "So the dumb brute needs a les-son, too!"

Immediately the creatures oriented on Smash. From adistance they were repulsive; from up close, they wereworse. They launched purple spittle at him, belched ob-

74 Ogre, Ogre

scenely all over their bodies, and scratched at him withdirty claws. But several still chased the hapless fairy lass.

Smash became moderately perturbed. Now it seemed thereputation of ogres was on the line. He picked up a ghastly.It defecated on his paw. He heaved it into the forest. Itscurried back. He pounded another into the ground—but itmerely squished flat, then rebounded. He tore one apart,but it just stretched impossibly, and snapped back to itsnormal shapelessness when he let go, leaving a slug ofsmelly slime on his fingers.

Now the fairy screamed louder. The ghastlies had almostcaught her. Smash had to act quickly or he would be toolate to help her. But what would stop these creatures?- Fortunately, his new intelligence assisted. If throwing,pounding, and stretching didn't work, maybe tying would.He grabbed two ghastlies and squeezed and squished themtogether, tying a knot in their infinitely stretchable limbs.Then he tied in a third, and a fourth, and a fifth. Soon hehad a huge ball of tied ghastlies, since they kept comingstupidly at him. Their rebounding and stretching didn't dothem much good; it merely tightened the knots. In duecourse, all the ghastlies were balled together, spitting, hiss-ing, scratching, and pooping on each other constantly.

Smash dropped the ball, wiped himself off on sometowel-leaves, and checked on the fairy. She was as fright-ened of him as she had been of the ghastlies. He did notchase her; he had only wanted to make sure she was nottoo badly hurt.

When the fairy saw him stop, she stopped. She was a tinything, hardly half the height of Tandy, a nude girl formwith sparldingly mussed hair and thin, iridescent wingswith scenic patterns. "You aren't chasing me, ogre?"

"No. Go your way in peace, fairy."

"But why did you tie all the ghastlies in a knot, if youdidn't want to gobble me up?"

"To help you escape."

She had difficulty assimilating this. "I thought you werean ogre, but you neither sound nor act like one."

"We all have our off days," Smash said apologetically.

Tandy and the Siren arrived. "He's a gentle ogre," theSiren explained. "He helps the helpless." She introducedthe three of them.

Ogre, Ogre

75

"I'm John," the fairy said. Then, before they could react,she continued. "I know, I know it's not a proper name forthe like of me, but my father was away when I was born,and the message got garbled, and I was stuck with it. Sonow I'm on a quest for my proper name. But I got tossedby a gust and hurt my wing, and then the ghastlies—"

"Why don't you travel with us?" Tandy asked. "Untilyour wing gets better. Monsters don't bother us much. Wehave one of our own." She gripped Smash's dangling ham-hand possessively.

John considered, evidently uncertain about travelingwith a monster. Then the ball of ghastlies began workingloose, and she decided. "Yes, I will go with you. It shouldtake only a day or so for my wing to mend."

Smash did not comment. He had not asked for any com-panions, but Tandy had been forced on him, and she had apropensity for inviting others. Perhaps it was becauseXanth was so new to her that she felt the company of oth-ers who were more familiar with it would improve things.Maybe she was right; the Siren had certainly helped themget out of the gourd.. It didn't really matter; Smash couldtravel with three as well as with one.

Now night came. Smash foraged for food and found apatch of spaghetti just ripening near a spice tree. He har-vested several great handfuls, shook the spice on them, andproffered this for their repast. The girls seemed a trifledoubtful at first, but all were hungry, and soon they wereconsuming the delicious, slippery stuff, ogre-style, by thehandful and slurpful. Then they found a basket palm withenough stout hanging baskets for all, and spent a reasona-bly comfortable night.

But before they slept, the Siren questioned John aboutthe kind of name she was looking for. "Why don't you justtake any name you like and use it?"

"Oh, I couldn't," John said. "I can answer only to thename I was given. Since I was given the wrong one, I mustkeep it until I recover the right one."

"How can you be sure there is a right one? If your fatherwas misinformed—"

"Oh, no, he knew who I was. He sent back a good name,but somehow it got lost, and the wrong name arrived in-stead. By the time he got home, it was too late to fix it."

Smash understood the Siren's perplexity. He, like her,had not been aware that names were so intricately tagged.

"Does that mean that someone else got your name?" theSiren asked.

"Of course. Some male fairy got my name, and must beas unhappy with it as I am with his. But if I find him, wecan exchange them. Then everything will be just fine."

"I see," the Siren said. "I hope you find him soon."

In the morning they breakfasted on honeydew that hadformed on the leaves of the basket tree, then resumed thetrek north. John buzzed her healing wing every so often,and the pattern on it seemed to come alive in a three-dimensional image, like flowers blooming, but she. couldnot yet fly. She had to be content to walk. She was acheery little thing, good company, and full of cute anec-dotes about life among the fairies. It seemed the FairyKingdom was a large one, with many principalities and in-terstate commerce between groups, and internecine tradewars.

They started to climb. None of them was familiar withthis section of Xanth, which was east of the Region ofMadness, so they merely proceeded directly north. Withluck, it wouldn't be too bad.

But it was bad. The mountain became so steep it wasimpossible to climb normally. They could not go around it,because the sides of the channel they traveled had riseneven more steeply. They had either to proceed forward orto retreat all the way to the base and try another approach.None was willing to retreat.

Smash used his gauntleted fists to break out sections ofrock, making crude steps for the others. Fortunately, thereally steep part was not extensive, and by noon they stoodat the top.

It was a lake, hardly on the scale of Ogre-Chobee butimpressive enough, brimful with sparkling water. "Thismust be an old volcano," John said. "I have flown oversimilar ones, though not this big. We must beware; waterdragons like such lakes, especially if they are hot on thebottom."

Smash grimaced. He didn't like water dragons, becausethey tended to be too much for an honest ogre to handle.

But he saw no sign of such a creature here. No droppings,no piles of bones, no discarded old scales or teeth.

"What are those?" Tandy inquired, pointing.

There were marks on the surface of the water. Theywere roughly circular indentations, with smaller indenta-tions on one side of each large one. "They look like prints,"the Siren said. "As if some creature walked on the water.Is that possible?"

Smash put one foot on the water. It sank through. Theripples moved across the prints, erasing them. "Not possi-ble," he decided.

Still, they decided to stay clear of the water until theyknew more about it. Seemingly minor mysteries could behazardous to their health in Xanth. They walked aroundthe west side of the lake, following one of those suspi-ciously convenient paths because there was no other routebetween the deep water and the climike outer face of themountain.

But as they bore north, following the curve of the cone,they encountered an outcropping of spongy rock."Magma," Smash conjectured, forcing another subterra-nean memory to the surface, slightly heated.

"I don't care who it is, it's in our way," Tandy com-plained. Indeed, the rock blotted out the path, forcing themto attempt a hazardous scramble.

"I shall remove it," Smash decided. He readied hishamfist and pounded one good pound on the magma.

The rock responded with a deafening reverberation.They all clapped their hands over their ears while themountain shook and the lake made waves.

Finally the awful noise died away. "That magma comesloud!" the Siren said.

"Magma cum laude," the ogre agreed, not hearing wellyet.

"It sure is some sound," Tandy said, looking dizzy. Thefairy agreed.

They decided they didn't like the sound of it, and wouldtry the other side of the lake, where the way might be quieter.As they walked the path back, an awful moan slid acrossthe water. "What is that?" Tandy demanded anxiously.

"The wailing of whatever made the prints," the Sirenconjectured.

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"Oh. So these are the prints of wails."

"Close enough." The Siren grimaced. "I hope we don'tmeet the wail, though. I've had some experience with mu-sic on water, and this makes me nervous."

"Yes, you ought to know," Tandy agreed. "My fathersaid you could bring any man to you from afar, if he heardyou."

"Yes, when I had my magic," she said sadly. "Thosedays are gone, and perhaps it is just as well, but I do getlonely."

They approached the east side of the lake. But here theyencountered more trouble. An ugly head lifted on a serpen-tine neck. It was not exactly a dragon's head, and not ex-actly a sea monster's head, but it had affinities with both.It was not large as monster heads went, but it hissed vi-ciously enough.

Smash was tired of being balked. He did not mess withthis minor monster; he reached out with one hand andcaught the neck between gauntleted thumb and forefinger.

Immediately another head appeared, similar to the firstand just as aggressive. Smash caught this one in his otherglove.

Then a third came. This was getting awkward! Had hestumbled onto a whole nest of serpents? Hastily Smashsmashed the first two heads together, crushing both, andreached for the third.

"They all connecti" the Siren exclaimed. "It's a many-headed serpent!"

Indeed it was! Four more heads rose up, making sevenin all. Smash crushed two more, but had to move quickly toprevent the remaining three from burying their fangs in hislimbs. He rose to the need, however, by catching one underhis feet and the last two in his hands. In a moment all hadbeen crushed, and he relaxed.

"Smash, look out!" Tandy cried. "More heads!"

Apparently a couple of the ones he had dealt with hadnot been completely destroyed, and had revived. This wasunusual; things seldom recovered from the impact of ogreforce. He grabbed these—and discovered they sproutedfrom the same neck. Their junction formed a neat Y. Hewas sure he hadn't encountered this configuration before.

"More heads!" Tandy screamed.

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"Now there were six more, in three pairs. New headswere growing from the old ones!

"It's a hydra!" the Siren cried. "Each lost head generatestwo more! You can never get ahead of it!"

"I've got too many heads of it!" Smash muttered, step-ping back. The hydra was generating a small forest of hiss-ing heads, each lunging and snapping at anything in range.Two were squaring off at each other.

"You can't kill a hydra," the Siren continued. "Its es-sence is immortal. It draws its strength from the water."

"Then I shall remove the water," Smash said. "It will beeasy to bash a hole in this rim and let the lake out."

"Oh, please don't do that!" the Siren protested. "I'm acreature of water, and I hate to see it mistreated. Youwould ruin a perfectly lovely lake, and drown many inno-cent creatures below, and kill many innocent lake denizens.There is an entire ecology in any such body—"

Was the mermaid becoming the conscience of the group?Smash hesitated.

"That's true," John admitted. "Pretty lakes should be leftalone. Most of them have much more good than evil inthem."

Smash looked at Tandy. "I agree," she said. "We don'twant to harm others, and this water is nice."

The ogre shrugged. He didn't want trouble with hisfriends. As he thought about it, with his amplified EyeQueue intelligence—which remained a nuisance—he real-ized they were right. Wanton destruction could only beget adeterioration of the environment of Xanth, and that would,in the long run, damage the prospects of ogres. "No harmto others," he agreed gruffly. If any other ogres ever heardof this, he would be in trouble! Imagine not destroyingsomething!

"Oh, I could kiss you," Tandy said. "But I can't reachyou."

Smash chuckled. "Good thing. Now we'll have to swimacross the lake. Do all of you know how to swim?"

"Oh, I couldn't swim," John said. "My wings wouldbreak."

"Maybe you can fly now," the Siren suggested.

"Maybe." The fairy tried, buzzing her pretty wings,making the flower-pattern blossoms again. She seemed to

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lighten as the downdraft of air dusted dirt out from theridge, but she did not quite take off. Then she jumped. Agust of wind passed at that moment, carrying her out overthe rim. She agitated her wings furiously, but could notsustain elevation and began to fall.

Smash reached out and caught her before she crashedinto the rocky slope. She screamed, then realized he washelping her, not attacking her. He set her carefully back onthe ledge, where she stood panting prettily and quiveringwith reaction.

"Not yet, it seems," the Siren said. "But you might sit onSmash's back while he swims."

"I suppose," the fairy agreed faintly. Her little barebosom was heaving. It occurred to Smash that the loss ofthe ability to fly might be quite disturbing to a creaturewhose natural mode of travel was flight. He might reactsimilarly if he lost his ogre strength.

They entered the water. Tandy could swim well enough,and, of course, the Siren converted to mermaid form andwas completely at home. John perched nervously onSmash's head and was so light he hardly felt her weight.He began stroking across the lake, careful not to splashenough to cause trouble, despite his pleasure in splashing.Some sacrifices were necessary when one traveled in com-pany.

The Siren led the way, easily outdistancing the others.That creature certainly could swim; she was in her ele-ment.

Then something loomed from the north. It was huge anddark, like a low-flying thundercloud, scooting across thewater. Simultaneously the awful wailing came again, andnow Smash realized it came from the cloud-thing. Therewas also a pattering drumbeat punctuating the wails.

The Siren paused in place. "I don't like this," she said."That thing is trotting on the surface of the water; I feelthe vibrations of its footfalls. And it's headed for us. Icould outdistance it, I think; but Tandy can't, and Smashcan't do much without imperiling John. We had better getout of the water."

"It's coming too fast," John said. "It will catch us beforewe get back to shore."

She was right. The monster loomed rapidly onward, cast-

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ing a dark shadow. It was not actually a cloud, but wascomposed of gray-blue foam, with a number of holesthrough which the wailing passed, and hundreds of little feetthat touched the water. When it moved to one side, theysaw the prints left on the surface, just like the ones theyhad seen before. The prints of wails.

"Oh, we are doomed!" John cried. "Save yourself,Smash; dive under the water, hide from it!"

An ogre hide from a monster? Little did the fairy graspthe magnitude of the insult she had innocently rendered."No," Smash said. "I'll fight it."

"It's too big to fight!"

"It probably smothers its prey by surrounding it," Tandysaid. She was being practical. She seemed much less afraidof things since having 'discovered the ultimate nature offear inside the gourd. Monsters were only monsters, whenone's soul was intact. "You can't fight fog or jelly."

Smash realized she was probably right. These assortedgirls were making more sense than he would have thoughtbefore he came to know them. In the water, with a delicateand flightless fairy on his head, he could not fight effi-ciently anyway—and if there was nothing really solid topunch out, his fists would be of little use.' It galled him toconcede that there were monsters that an ogre couldn'thandle, but in this case it seemed to be so. Curse this EyeQueue that made him see reason!

"I'll lead it away!" the Siren cried. She was hovering inthe water, her powerful tail elevating her body, so that itwas as if she stood only waist-deep. She would have been aconsiderable sight, that way, for a human male. It seemedto Smash that she should have no trouble attracting a mer-man, at such time as she found one. "You swim on acrossthe lake," the Siren continued. She set off toward the west,moving with amazing velocity. She was like a bird in flightacross the surface of the lake.

When she was a fair distance away, she paused and be-gan to sing. She had a beautiful voice, with an eerie qual-ity, a little like the wailing of the monster. Perhaps she wasdeliberately imitating it.

The monster paused. Then it rotated grandly and rantoward the Siren, its little feet striking the water withoutsplashing, leaving the prints. That mystery had been

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solved, though Smash did not understand how the printsremained after the wailing monster moved on. But, ofcourse, the effects of magic did not need any explanation.

Once the monster had cleared the area, lured away bythe Siren, Smash and Tandy swam on across. It was a fairdistance, and Tandy tired, slowing them; it seemed therewere not many lakes this big in the underworld. FinallySmash told her to grab hold of one of his feet so he couldtow her. The truth was, he was getting tired himself; hewould have preferred to wade, but the water was far toodeep for that. It would have been un-ogrish to confess anyweakness, however.

They made it safely to the north lip. They drew them-selves out and rested, hoping the Siren was all right.

Soon she appeared, swimming deep below the surface.Her tail gave her a tremendous forward thrust, and shewas a thing of genuine beauty as she slid through the wa-ter, her hair streaming back like bright seaweed, her bodyas sleek and glossy as that of a healthy fish. Then she cameup, her head bursting the surface, her hands rising auto-matically to brush back her wet tresses, mermaidlike. "My,that was interesting!" she said, flipping out of the water tosit on the rim, her tail hidden in the water, so that now shemost resembled a healthy nymph.

"The monster was friendly?" Tandy asked doubtfully.

"No, it tried to consume me. But it couldn't reach belowthe water because its magic prints keep it above. It tried tolure me close, but I'm an experienced hand at luring crea-tures, and was too careful to be taken in."

"Then you were in real danger!" Tandy was now verysensitive to danger from monsters that lured their victims,whether by an easy access path or a convenient peephole.

"No danger for me," the Siren said, flinging her damphair out as she changed to human legs and climbed the restof the way from the water. "Few creatures can catch mykind in our element. Not that there are many quite likeme; most merfolk can't make legs. That's my human heri-tage. Of course, my sister the Gorgon never was able tomake a tail; it was her face that changed. Magical heredityis funny stuff! But I talked briefly with the monster. Heconsiders himself a whale."

"A whale of a what?" Smash asked.

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"Just a whale."

"Isn't that a Mundane monster?" John asked. It was gen-erally known in Xanth that the worst monsters were Mun-dane, as were the worst people.

"Yes. But this one claims some whales migrated toXanth, grew legs so they could cross to inland waters, andthen kept the legs for lake-running. Some find small lakes;

they're puddle-jumpers. Some find pools of rum; they'rerum-runners. He says he's of the first water, a royal mon-ster, a Prince of his kind."

"A Prince of Whales," Tandy said. "Is he really?"

"I don't think so. That's why he wails."

"Life is hard all over," Smash said without much sympa-thy. "Let's get down off this mountain."

Indeed, the sun was losing strength and starting to fall,as it did each day, never learning to conserve its energy sothat it could stay aloft longer. They needed to get to a com-fortable place before night. Fortunately, the slope on thisside was not as steep, so they were able to slide down itfairly readily.

As they neared the northern base, where the forest re-sumed, a nymph came out to meet them. She was a deli-cate brown in color, with green hair fringed with red. Hertorso, though slender and full in the manner of her kind,was gently corrugated like the bark of a young tree, andher toes were rootlike. She approached Tandy, who was themost human of the group. "Please—do you know whereCastle Roogna is?"

"I tried to reach Castle Roogna a year ago," Tandy said."But I got lost. I think Smash knows, though."

"Oh, I wouldn't ask an ogre!" the nymph exclaimed.

"He's a halfway tame ogre," Tandy assured her. "Hedoesn't eat many nymphs."

Smash was getting used to these slights. He waited pa-tiently for the nymph to gain confidence, then answeredher question as well as he could. "I have been to CastleRoogna. But I'm not going there at the moment, and theway is difficult. It is roughly west of here."

"I'll find it somehow," the nymph said. "I've got to." Shefaced west.

"Now wait," Tandy protested, as Smash had suspectedshe would. The girl had sympathy enough to overflow all

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85

Xanth! "You can't get there alone! You could easily getlost or gobbled up. Why don't you travel with us until wefind someone else who is going there?"

"But you're going north!" the nymph protested.

"Yes. But we travel safely, because of Smash." Tandyindicated him again. "Nobody bothers an ogre."

"There is that," the nymph agreed. "I don't want tobother him myself." She considered, seeming somewhattired. "I could help you find food and water. I'm good atthat sort of thing. I'm a hamadryad."

"Oh, a tree-nymph!" the Siren exclaimed. "I should haverealized. What are you doing out of your tree?"

"It's a short story. Let me find you a place to eat andrest, and I will tell it."

The dryad kept her promise. Soon they were ensconced ina glade beside a large eggplant whose ripe eggs had beenhard-boiled by the sun. Nearby was a sodapond that spar-kled effervescently. They sat in a circle cracking openeggs, using the shells to dip out sodawater. Proper introduc-tions were made, and the dryad turned out to be namedFireoak, after her tree.

She was, despite her seeming youth, over a century old.All her life had been spent with her fireoak tree, whichhad sprouted from a fireacom the year she came intobeing. She had grown with it, as hamadryads did, protect-ing it and being protected by it. Then a human village hadset up nearby, and villagers had come out to cut down thetree to build a firehouse, Fireoak made fine fire-resistantwood, the dryad explained; its own appearance of burningwas related to Saint Elmo's fire, an illusion of burning thatmade it stand out beautifully and discouraged predatorybugs except for fireants. In vain had the dryad protestedthat the cutting of the oak would kill both it and her; thevillagers wanted the wood. So she had taken advantage ofthe full moon that night to weave a lunatic fringe thatshrouded the tree, hiding it from them. .But that would lastonly a few days; when the moon shrank to a crescent, sowould the fringe, betraying the tree's location. She had toaccomplish her mission before then.

"But how can a trip to Castle Roogna help?" Johnasked. "They use wood there, too, don't they?"

"The King is there!" Fireoak replied. "I understand he isan environmentalist. He protects special trees."

"It is true," Smash agreed. "He protects rare monsters,too." Now for the first time he realized the probable basisfor King Trent's tolerance of an ogre family near CastleRoogna: they were rare wilderness specimens. "He alwayslooks for the solution of least ecological damage."

The dryad looked at him curiously. "You certainly don'ttalk like an ogre!"

"He blundered into an Eye Queue vine," Tandy ex-plained. "It cursed him with smartness."

"How are you able to survive away from your tree?" theSiren asked. "I thought no hamadryad could leave for morethan a moment."

"That's what I thought," Fireoak said. "But when deaththreatened my tree, desperation gave me extraordinarystrength. For my tree I can do what I must. I feel terriblyinsecure, however. My soul is the tree."

Tandy and Smash jumped. The analogy was too close forcomfort. It was no easy thing to be separated from one'ssoul.

"I know the feeling," the Siren said. "I lived all my lifein one lake. But I suddenly realized that it had becomea desolate place for a lone mermaid. So I am looking for abetter lake. But I do miss my original lake, for it containsall my life's experience, and I wonder whether it missesme, too."

"How will you know the new lake won't be desolate foryou, too?" Fireoak asked.

"It won't be if it has the right merman in it."

The dryad blushed, her face for an instant showing thecolor of the fire of her tree. "Oh."

"You're a hundred years old—and you have no experi-ence with men?" Tandy asked.

"Well, I'm a dryad," Fireoak said defensively. "We justdon't have much to do with men—only with trees."

"What sort of experience have you had?" the Siren askedTandy.

"A demon—he—I'd rather not discuss it." It was Tan-dy's turn to blush. "Anyway, my father is a man."

"Most fathers are," the Siren said.

86 Ogre, Ogre

"Mine isn't!" Smash protested. "My father is an ogre."

She ignored that. "I inherited my legs from my father,my tail from my mother. She was not a true woman, but hewas a true man."

"You mean human men really do have, uh, dealingswith mermaids?" Tandy asked.

"Human men have dealings with any maid they cancatch," the Siren said with a wry smile. "I understand mymother wasn't hard to catch; my father was a very hand-some man. But he had to leave when my sister the Gorgonwas born."

After a pause, Fireoak resumed her story. "So if I canjust talk to the King and get him to save my tree, every-thing will be all right."

"What about the other trees?" John asked.

Fireoak looked blank. "Other trees?"

"The other ones the villagers are cutting down. Maybethey don't have dryads to speak for them, but they don'tdeserve destruction."

"I never thought of that," Fireoak said. "I suppose Ishould put in a word at Castle Roogna for them, too. Itwould be no bad thing to lobby for the trees."

They found good locations in the trees and settled downfor the night. Smash spread himself out on the gladeground; no one would bother him. His head was near theliquidly flowing trunk of a water oak Fireoak had chosen;

he overheard the hamadryad's muted sobbing. Evidentlyher separation from her beloved home tree was harder onher than she showed by day, and the threat to that tree wasno distant concern. Smash hoped he could find a way tohelp her. If he had to, he could go and stand guard overher tree himself. But he didn't know how long that wouldtake. He didn't want to delay his own mission too long, lestthe time for the Good Magician's Answer should run out.There was also the matter of the gourd-coffin's lien on hissoul; anything he had to do, he had better get done withinthree months. Already he felt not quite up to snuff, as ifpart of his soul had been leached away, taking some of hisstrength with it.

Next day the five of them marched north. The land lev-eled out, but hazards remained. Tandy blundered into a

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chokecherry bush, and Smash had to rip the entire plantout of the ground before its vines stopped choking her. Far-ther along they encountered a power plant, whose branchesswelled out into strange angular configurations andhummed with power; woe betide the creature who blun-dered into that!

Around midday they discovered a lovely vegetable tree,on whose branches grew cabbages, beans, carrots, tomatoes,and turnips, all in fine states of ripeness. Here were all theingredients for an excellent salad! But as Smash ap-proached it, Tandy grew nervous. "I smell a rat," she said,sniffing the air. "There are big rats down in the caveswhere I live; I know their odor well. They always meantrouble."

Smash sniffed. Sure enough, there was the faint aromaof rats. What were they doing here?

"I smell it, too," John said. "I hate rats. But where arethey?"

The Siren was walking around the tree. "Somewhere inor near the vegetable tree," she announced. "I fear thisplant is not entirely what it appears."

Fireoak approached it. "Let me check. I'm good withtrees." She was showing no sign of the agony of her separa-tion from her tree, but Smash knew it remained. Her nightin a tree must have restored her somewhat, though ofcourse it wasn't her tree.

The hamadryad stood close to the vegetable tree. Slowlyshe touched a leaf. "This is a normal leaf," she said. Thenshe touched a potato—and one of its eyes blinked. "Getaway from here!" Fireoak screamed. "It's a rat!"

Then the fruits and vegetables exploded into action.Each one sprouted legs, tail, and snout and dropped to theground. A major swarm of rats had camouflaged itself bymasquerading as vegetables, luring the unwary into con-^ct—but the smell had given them away. Once a rat, al-ways a rat, by the smell of it.

The Siren, Tandy, and John scurried back in time toavoid the first surge of the rat-race. But Fireoak stood tooclose. The beasties swarmed around her, biting at her legs,causing her to trip and fall.

Smash leaped across, swooping down with one hand tolift the hamadryad clear of the ground. Several rats came

88 Ogre, Ogre

up with her, chewing savagely at her barklike skin. Shescreamed and tried to brush them off, but they clung tena-ciously and bit at her hands.

Smash shook her, but hesitated to do it vigorouslyenough to fling away the rats, lest it hurt her. As it was,bits of bark and leaf were flying off. Smash had to pinchthe rats off one by one, and their claws and teeth leftscratches on the 'dryad's body. By the time the last wasgone, she was in an awful state, oozing sap from severalscrapes. The swarm of rats surrounded Smash and tried tobite his feet and climb his hairy legs.

Smash stomped ferociously, shaking the glade and crush-ing several rats with each stomp. But there were hundredsof the little monsters, coming at him from every direction,moving rapidly. They threatened to get on him no matterhow fast he stomped. He didn't dare set the dryad down,lest the same fate befall her. His great strength hardlyavailed against these relatively puny enemies.

"Get away from him!" Tandy screamed from a safe dis-tance. "Leave him alone, you rats!" She seemed really an-gry. It was almost as if she were trying to defend him fromthe enemy; that, of course, was a ludicrous reversal of theirsituation, yet it touched him oddly.

Smash stomped away from the tree, but the rats stayedwith him. In order to run he would have to do two things:

move the dryad back and forth as his arms pumped andflee a known danger. The one seemed physically hazardousto another person, while the other was emotionally distaste-ful. So he moved slowly, stamping, while the rats beganclimbing his legs.

Then Tandy's arm shot out as if hurling a rock. Her facewas red, her teeth bared, her body rigid, as if she were in astate of absolute fury—but there was no rock in her hand.She was throwing nothing.

Something exploded at Smash's feet. He was knockedoff them, barely catching his balance. All around him therats turned belly-up, stunned.

He stared at the carnage, standing still because his legswere numb. He set down the hamadryad, who steppeddaintily over the bodies. "What happened?"

Tandy sounded abashed. "I threw a tantrum."

Smash left the twitching rats and went to join her. His

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feet felt as if they were nothing but bones, with the fleshmelted off, though this was not the case. "That's a spell?"

"That's bad temper, my talent," she said, eyes downcast."When I get mad, I throw a tantrum. Sometimes it does alot of damage. I'm sorry; I should have controlled my emo-tion."

"Sorry?" Smash said, bewildered, looking back at therum of the rat-swarm. "That's a wonderful talent!"

"Oh, sure," she replied with irony."My mother had a similar talent. Of course, she was acurse-fiend; they all throw curses.". "Maybe I have curse-fiend ancestry," Tandy said sourly."My father Crombie came from a long line of soldiers, andthey do get around quite a bit."

Now the others came up. "You did that, Tandy?" Fire-oak asked. "You saved me a lot of misery! If Smash hadput me down amidst those awful rats, or if they hadclimbed up him and gotten to me, as they were trying to—"She winced, feeling her wounds. She was obviously inconsiderable discomfort.

"That's an extremely useful talent for the jungles ofXanth," the Siren said.

"You really think so?" Tandy asked, brightening. "I al-ways understood it wasn't nice to be destructive."

"It isn't?" Smash asked, surprised.

Then they all laughed. "Sometimes perhaps it is," theSiren concluded.

They found some genuine vegetables for lunch, then re-sumed the march. But soon they heard a ferocious snuf-fling and snorting ahead, low to the ground. "Oh, thatmight be a dragon with a cold," John said worriedly. "Ican't say I really like dragons; they're too hot."

"I will go see," Smash said. He discovered he was ratherenjoying this journey. Violence was a natural part of his na-ture—but now he had people to protect, so there was acertain added justification to it. It was more meaningful tobash a dragon to save a collection of pretty little lasses thanit was to do it merely for its own sake. The Eye Queuecaused him to ponder the meaning of the things he did,and so it helped to have at least a little meaning present. Atsuch time as he got free of the curse, he could forget aboutthese inconvenient considerations.

90 Ogre, Ogre

He rounded a brush-bush and faced the snorting mon-ster, hamfists at the ready—and paused, dismayed.

It was no dragon. It was a small oink, with a squared-offsnout and a curled-up tail. But it snorted like a huge fire-breathing monster.

Smash sighed. He picked up the oink by the tail andtossed it into the brush. "All clear," he called.

The others appeared. "It's gone?" Tandy asked. "But wedidn't hear any battle."

"It was only a short snort," the ogre said, disgusted. Hehad so looked forward to a good fight!

"Another person might have represented it as the mosttremendous of dragons," the Siren said.

"Why?"

"To make it seem he had done a most valiant deed."

"Why do that?" Smash asked, perplexed.

She smiled. "Obviously you don't suffer from that syn-drome."

"I suffer from the Eye Queue curse."

"Cheer up. Smash," Tandy said. "We're bound to en-counter a real dragon sometime."

"Yes," the ogre agreed, cheering as directed. After all,the thing to do with disappointments was to rise abovethem. The Eye Queue told him that.

"Speaking of dragons," John said, "there is a story thatcirculates among fairies about dragons and their parts, andI've always wondered whether it was true."

"I've met some dragons," Smash said. "What's thestory?"

"That if a dragon's ear is taken off, you can listen to itand hear wondrous things."

Smash scratched his head. Several fleas jumped off,startled. Since his skull no longer heated much when hetried to think, the fleas had no natural control. "I nevertried that."

"It must be sort of hard to get a dragon's ear," Tandyremarked. "I doubt they part with them willingly."

Fireoak considered. "There are stories the mockingbirdstell, to mock the ignorant. They would nest in my treesometimes and talk of marvelous things, and I never knewhow much to believe. One did once mention such a qualityof a dragon's ear. It said the ear would twitch when any-

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thing of interest to the holder was spoken anywhere, so onewould know to listen. But often the news was not pleasant,for dragons have ears for bad news. And as Tandy says,dragons' ears are very hard for normal people to come by."

"Next dragon I slay, I will save an ear," Smash said,intrigued.

They continued north till dusk, with only minor adven-tures, avoiding tangle trees, clinging vines, and stranglerfigs, scaring off tiger lilies and dogwood, and ignoring thetrickly illusions spawned by assorted other plants. Swarmsof biting bugs converged, but Smash blew them away in hisusual fashion with selected roars. By nightfall the partywas close to something significant, but Smash couldn't re-member what.

They located a forest of black, blue, and white ash treeswhose shedding ashes covered the forest floor. Any recentfootprints showed; and, because each color of tree spreadits ashes at a different hour, it was possible to know howrecently any creature had passed. White prints were themost recent, blue prints were older and somehow more in-tricate, with maplike traceries on them, and black printsdated from the night. Some ashes had been hauled, but nodragons or other dangerous creatures had been here in thepast few hours.

Amidst this forest was a handsome cottonwood that pro-vided cotton for beds for them all. "I always thought camp-ing out would be uncomfortable," Tandy remarked. "Butthis is getting to be fun. Now if only I knew where I wasgoing!"

"You don't know?" the Siren asked, surprised.

"Good Magician Humfrey answered my Question bytelling me to travel with Smash," Tandy said. "So I'm trav-eling. It's a pretty good trip, and I'm learning a lot andmeeting nice new people, but that's not my Answer. Smashis looking for the Ancestral Ogres, but I doubt that's whatI'm looking for."

"I understand the Good Magician is getting old," the Si-ren said.

"He's pretty old," Tandy agreed. "But he knows an aw-ful lot, and your sister the Gorgon is making him youngagain."

"She would," the Siren said. "I am jealous of her power

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over men. In my heyday I used to summon men to my isle,but she always took them away, and, of course, they neverlooked at other women after she was through with them."

Because they had turned to stone. Smash knew. The factwas, the Gorgon had been as lonely as the Siren, despiteher devastating power. The Gorgon had been smitten bythe first man who could nullify her talent. Magician Hum-frey, so she had gone to him with a Question: would i hemarry her? He had made her serve a year as housemaidand guardian in his castle before giving her his Answer: hewould. Evidently that was the sort of man it required tocapture the heart of the Gorgon. Smash understood thattheir wedding, officiated by Prince Dor when he was tem-porary King, had been the most remarkable occasion of theyear, attended by all the best monsters. Smash's fatherCrunch had been there, and Tandy's mother Jewel. By allaccounts, the marriage was a reasonably happy one, consid-ering the special nature of its parties.

"I wonder what it is like to be with a man?" Fireoaksaid, in a half-wistful question. Her injuries of the day hadfatigued her greatly, perhaps making her depressed. Evi-dently their conversation of the preceding night had re-mained on her mind.

"My friends always told me men were difficult to getalong with," John said. "A girl can't live with them, andshe can't live without them."

"Well, I've tried living without," the Siren said. "I'mready to try with. Good and ready! At least it shouldn't bedull. First pool I find with an available merman, watchout!"

"Poor merman!" the fairy said.

"Oh, I'm sure he'll deserve whatever I give him. I don'tthink he'll have cause to complain, any more than Magi-dan Humfrey has with my sister. We draw on similarlore."

"All girls do. But it seems terribly original to each inno-cent man." There was general laughing agreement.

"You speak as if no man is here," Tandy said, soundingfaintly aggrieved."There's a man here, listening to our secrets?" Fireoakcried, alarmed.

"Smash."

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There was another general titter. "Don't be silly," Johnsaid. "He's an ogre."

"Can't an ogre also be a man?"

The tittering subsided. "Yes, of course, dear," the Sirensaid reassuringly. "And a good one, too. We take Smashtoo much for granted. None of us could travel freely herewithout his formidable protection. We ought to thank him,instead of imposing on him."

Smash lay still. He had not intended to feign sleep, butthought it best not to join in this conversation. It was inter-esting enough without his participation. He had not knownabout this conspiracy of the females of Xanth, but now hecould remember how he had seen it in action when Prin-cess Irene snared Prince Dor, and even when his motherpacified his father. It did seem that the distaff knew thingsthat the males did not and used them cleverly to achievetheir desires.

"What's a lady ogre like?" Tandy asked.

"One passed my tree once," Fireoak said. "She was hugeand hairy and had a face like a bowl of overcooked mushsomeone had sat on. I never saw anything so ugly in all mylife."

"Well, she was an ogress," the Siren said. "They havedifferent standards of beauty. You can bet they know whatbull-ogres like, though! I suppose an ogre wants a wife whocan knock down her own trees for firewood—no offense,Fireoak—and kill her own griffins for stew so he doesn'thave to interrupt his dragon hunting for trifles."

They laughed again, and their chatter meandered acrossother femalish subjects, recipes, prettifying spells, junglegossip, and such, until they all drifted off to sleep. But theimages they had conjured enchanted Smash's imagination.An ogress who could knock down her own trees and slayher own griffins—what an ideal mate! And a face likesquashed mush—what sheerest beauty! How wonderful itwould be to encounter such a creature!

But the only ogress he had met was his mother—whowasn't really an ogress, but a curse-fiend acting the part.She acted very well, but when she forgot her makeup, herface no longer looked like mush. Smash had always pre-tended not to notice how distressingly fair her face andform became in those unguarded moments, so as not to em-

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barrass her. The truth was, had his mother the actress chosento pass among females like these Smash now traveled with,she could have done so without causing alarm. And, ofcourse, as soon as she prepared herself, she was the com-pleat ogress again, as brutish and mean as any ogre couldask for. Certainly his father Crunch loved her and wouldmove mountains for her, despite her secret shame of anun-ogrish origin. One of those mountains had been movedto rest near their home so that she could climb it and lookout across Xanth when the mood took her.

At last Smash slept. He still wasn't used to doing somuch thinking, and it tired him despite the amplificationthe Eye Queue provided. He had never had to work thingsout so rationally before, or to see the interrelationshipsamong diverse things. Well, one day he would win free ofthe curse and be a true brute of an ogre again. He slept.

Chapter 6. Dire Strait

Next morning they came up against the barrierSmash had been unable to remember. It was a huge crevicein the earth, a valley so deep and steep that they shrankback from it. It extended east and west; there seemed tobe no end to it, no way around.

"How can we go north?" Tandy asked plaintively. "Thisawful cleft is impossible!"

"Now I remember it," Smash said. "It crosses all ofXanth. Down near Castle Roogna there are magic bridges."

"Castle Roogna?" Fireoak asked. She looked wan, as ifshe had not been eating well, though she had been providedwith all she wanted. Smash suspected her absence from herbeloved tree was like an ordinary person's need for water.She would have to return to it soon, or die. She was suffer-ing from deprivation of soul, and would soon become asTandy had been within the gourd, if not helped. Her ratwounds only aggravated the condition, hastening the pro-cess.

"That's right," Tandy said brightly. "If this crack passesnear Castle Roogna, you can follow it there! Your problemis solved."

"Yes, solved," the hamadryad agreed wanly.

Now the Siren noticed her condition. "Dear, are youwell?"

"As well as I can be," the dryad replied gamely. "Therest of you must go on across the chasm; I will find myown way to Castle Roogna."

"I think you have been away from your tree too long,"the Siren said. "You had better return to it, to restore your

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strength, before attempting the long trip to Castle Roogna."

"But there is not time!" Fireoak protested. "The moon iswaning, night by night; soon the lunatic fringe will sunder,and my tree will be exposed."

"Yet if you perish on the way to see the King, you cando your tree no good," the Siren pointed out.

"It is indeed a dire strait," the dryad agreed, sinking tothe ground.

The Siren looked at Smash. "Where is your tree, dear?"she asked Fireoak.

"North of the chasm. I had forgotten about—"

"But how did you cross?"

"A firebird helped me. Because I am associated with afireoak. But the bird is long gone now."

"I think we must nevertheless cross over soon and returnyou to your tree," the Siren said. Again she looked mean-ingfully at Smash.

"We will go with you, to guard your tree," Smash said,catching on.

Tandy clapped her hands. "Oh, how wonderful to thinkof that. Smash! We can help her!"

Smash said nothing. The Siren had really thought of it,but he was amenable. They couldn't let Fireoak perishfrom neglect—and she surely would, otherwise. They couldcertainly guard her tree from harm; no one would comenear an ogre.

But first they had to get to the tree—and that meantcrossing the chasm—in a hurry. How were they going to dothat?

"You chipped steps in the prints-of-wails mountain,"Tandy suggested.

"But that was slow," the Siren said. "It could take sev-eral days. We must cross today."

They stared into the chasm, baffled. There seemed to beno way to cross it rapidly—yet they had to, somehow. Fornow all could see how the hamadryad was failing. Fireoak'ssurface had turned from lightly corrugated skin to deeplyserrated bark, from young nymph to old tree trunk. Hergreen hair was wilting, and the tinge of red was turningblack. Her fire would soon be out.

"There must be a path," John said. "If we just spreadout and look, surely we'll find it."

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That was a positive idea. They commenced their searchfor the path.

There was the sound of galloping hooves from the west.The group ran back together, and Smash faced the sound,ready for whatever might come.

Two centaurs appeared, moving rapidly. One was male,the other female. Centaurs could be good news or bad, de-pending. Smash was conscious of his orange jacket andsteel gauntlets, gifts of the centaurs of Centaur Isle, butknew that there could be rogue centaurs in this wilderness.What were these two doing here?

Then Smash recognized them. "Chetl Chem!" he ex-claimed.

The two drew up, panting, a light sheen of sweat ontheir human and equine portions. Smash embraced each inturn, then turned to make introductions. "These are friendsof mine from the Castle Roogna region." He faced theother way. "And these are friends of mine from all overXanth."

"Smash!" the filly centaur exclaimed. "What happenedto your rhymes?"

"I'm cursed with intelligence, among other things."

"Yes, I can see the other things," Chet said, contemplat-ing the assorted females. "I never knew you were inter-ested."

"We sort of imposed on him," Tandy said.

"Yes, Smash is impose-able," Chem agreed. She wasyoung, so lacked the imposing proportions of her mother;

the last time Smash had seen her, she had been playingchildren's galloping games. In another year or so she wouldbe looking for a mate. He wondered why she was not stillin centaur-schooling, as her mother was very strict abouteducation. "We came here to do the same."

"The same?" Smash asked. "We're traveling north."

"Yes," Chem said. "Good Magician Humfrey told mewhere to intercept you. You see, I'm doing a thesis on thegeography of uncharted Xanth, completing my education,but my folks won't let me travel alone through that region,so—"

"And so I escorted my little sister this far," Chet fin-ished. He was a handsome centaur, with noble features, afine coat, and excellent muscles on both his human and

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equine portions. But a purple scar marred his left shoulder,where a wyvem had once bitten him, causing serious ill-ness. "I know she'll be safe with you. Smash. You're a bigogre now."

"Safe? We're about to try to cross this gulf!" Smash pro-tested. "And we don't know how."

"Oh, yes. The Gap Chasm. I brought you a rope." Chetpresented a neat coil. "Humfrey said you would need it."

"A rope!" Suddenly their way down into the chasm wasclear. Centaur rope was always strong enough for its pur-pose.

"I'll help get you down," Chet said. "But I'm not sup-posed to go myself. I have to return immediately to CastleRoogna with a message or two. What's the message?"

Smash's curse of intelligence enabled him to catch on."A village is about to cut down a fireoak tree for timber.The tree's hamadryad will die. The King must save thetree."

"I'll tell him," Chet agreed. "Where is it?"

Smash turned to Fireoak, who sat listlessly on theground. "Where is your tree?"

The hamadryad made a feeble motion with her hand.

"This is no good," Chet said. "Chem, let's use yourmap."

The filly walked over to Fireoak. "Show me on my pic-ture," she said.

An image formed between them. It was a contour map ofthe Land of Xanth, a long peninsula with the Gap Chasmacross its center and the ocean around it. "Show me wherethe tree is," Chem repeated.

Fireoak looked, slowly orienting on the scene. "There,"she said, pointing to a region near the northern rim of theGap.

Chem nodded. "There is a human village there, just set-ting up. That's already on my chart." She looked at herbrother. "Got it, Chet?"

"Got it, Chem," the male centaur replied. "You alwaysdo make the scene. Smash, the moment you're down in theGap, I'll gallop back and tell the King. I'm sure he'll han-dle the business about the tree. But it will take me a coupledays to get there, so you'll have to protect the tree until

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then." He glanced about. "Was there any other message? Itseems there should be more than one."

The people looked around at each other. Finally Tandysaid, "I'd like to send a greeting to my father Crombie, ifthat's all right."

Chet tapped his head, making a mental note. "One greet-ing to Crombie from daughter. Got it." He looked morecarefully at Tandy. "He always bragged he had a cutedaughter. I see he was correct."

Tandy blushed. She hadn't known her father had saidthat about her.

They tied the rope to the trunk of a steelwood tree.Chem insisted on going down first. "That will prove therope is safe," she explained. "Even Smash doesn't weighmore than I do." Of course she was correct, for though herhuman portion was girlishly slender, her equine portionwas as solid as a horse.

She backed down, her four hooves bracing against thesteep side of the chasm. The rope looped once about hersmall human waist, just below her moderate bosom, andshe used her hands to give herself slack by stages. Whenshe got down to where the slope leveled out enough to en-able her to stand, she released the rope.

The Siren went down next, having less trouble becauseshe had so much less mass. Then Tandy, followed by thefairy, who fluttered her wings to make herself even lighterthan she was. Smash then made a harness out of the end ofthe rope, set Fireoak in it, and stood on the brink to lowerher carefully to Chem's waiting arms.

Finally Smash himself descended, merely applying onegauntlet to the rope and sliding rapidly down. Chet undidthe upper end from the steelwood tree and dropped it intothe chasm. They would need the rope again on the northslope.

"I'm on my way with one and a half messages," Chetcalled, and galloped off. "Remember: two days."

The slope continued to level, until they stood at the base.Here grass grew, but no trees. It was pleasant enough, andthe north slope was visible a short distance away. Theywalked across, studying the rise for the most suitable placeto ascend.

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It certainly wasn't good for climbing with a party ofgirls. The ground sloped gently up to a comer; from therethe cliff went almost straight up a dizzying height, beyondthe reach of the rope, even if there were any place or wayto anchor it.

"We must do what-we started to do before," the Sirensaid. "Spread out and look for a suitable place to climb."

"I believe there are paths here and there," Chem said. "Idon't have them on my map, because few people rememberthe Gap Chasm; it has an enduring forget-spell on it. Butthere has been enough travel in Xanth so that people haveto have crossed it, and not just at the magic bridges."

"A forget-spell," the Siren said. "How interesting. Thataccounts for Fireoak's forgetting it. And I'm sure Smashhas been here before, too. I hope that's the extent of the

spell."

"What do you mean?" Tandy asked.

"Oh, I'm just a worrier over nothing."

"I don't think so," Tandy said. "If there's any danger,you should warn us."

The Siren sighed. "You're right. Yet if there is dangerhere, it's too late for us to avoid it, since we're alreadyhere. It's only that once I heard something about a bigdragon in a chasm—and this is a chasm. It would be hardto escape a monster here. But of course that's far-fetched."

"Let's look for good hiding places, too," Tandy said."Just in case."

"Just in case," John agreed, overhearing. "Oh, suddenlyI don't really like this place!"

"So we must try to get out of this chasm as fast as wecan," Smash said, though the prospect of danger did notbother him. There really had not been much violence onthis journey.

Chem trotted east, while Smash lumbered west, sincethese were the two fastest movers of the group. The girl,Siren, and fairy spread out in between. They left the ha-madryad in the shade of a bush, since she was now tooweak to walk.

The cliff face changed, sloping at different angles anddifferent heights, but Smash found nothing that wouldreally help. It looked as if he would have to bash out astairway of sorts, tedious as that would be. But could he

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get the party up that way within two days, let alone in timeto save the hamadryad and her tree?

There was a commotion to the east. Chem was gallopingback, her lovely brown hair-mane flinging out, tail swish-ing nervously. "Dragon! Dragon!" she cried breathlessly.

The Siren's concern had been justified! "I'll stop it,"Smash said enthusiastically, charging east.

"No! It's big. It's the Gap Dragon!"

Now Smash remembered. The Gap Dragon ranged theGap Chasm, trapping and consuming any creatures foolishenough to stray here. The forget-spell had deceived himagain. The monster really profited from that spell, since noone remembered the danger. But it was coming back tohim now. This was a formidable menace.

The Siren, Tandy, and John were running west. Behindthem whomped the monster. It was long and low, with atriple pair of stubby legs. Its scales were metallic, glisteningin the sunlight, and clouds of steam puffed out of its nos-trils. Its body was the thickness of a good-sized tree trunk,but exceedingly limber. It moved by elevating one sectionand whomping it forward, then following through with an-other, because its legs were too short for true running. Butthe clumsy-seeming mechanism sufficed for considerablevelocity. In a moment the Gap Dragon would overtake theSiren.

Smash lumbered to the fray. He stood much taller thanthe dragon, but it reached much longer than he. Thus theydid not come together with a satisfying crash. The dragonscooted right under Smash, intent on the nymphlike morselbefore it.

The ogre screeched to a stop, literally, his callousedhamfeet churning up mounds of rubble. He bent forwardand grabbed the dragon's tail as it slid westward. He liftedit up, holding it tightly in both hands. This would halt themonster!

Alas, he had underestimated the dragon. The creaturewhomped onward. The tail lost its slack—but such was themass and impetus of the monster that it wrenched the ogreinto a somersault. He flipped right over, hanging on to thattail, and landed with a whomp of his own on his back—onthe dragon's tail.

But Smash's own mass was not inconsiderable. The

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103

shock of his landing traveled along the body of the dragonin a ripple. When the ripple passed a set of legs, they werewrenched momentarily off the ground; when it arrived atthe head, the mouth snapped violently. The jaws, reachingclose to the desperately fleeing Siren, fell short.

Now Smash had the Gap Dragon's baleful attention. Thedragon let out a yowl of discomfort and whipped its headaround. Its tail, pinned under the ogre, thrashed about, sothat Smash had trouble regaining his feet.

The dragon's neck curved in a sharp U-tum, bonelesslysupple. The head traveled smoothly back along the lengthof the body. The monster hardly needed its legs for thissort of maneuver. In a moment the spreading jaws were atSmash's own head, ready to take it in.The ogre, still flat on his back, stabbed upward with agauntleted fist. The jaws closed on it, but the fist continuedinexorably, punching past the slurp-wet tongue and into theback of the throat. The dragon's head was so large thatSmash's whole arm was engulfed—but that strike in thethroat caused the monster to gag, and the jaws partedagain. Smash recovered his arm before it got chomped.

The ogre sat up, but remained in the midst of the coilsof the dragon. The two grotesque heads of ogre and dragonfaced each other, snout to snout. Smash realized that thistime he had gotten himself into an encounter whose out-come he could not know. The Gap Dragon was his match.

Delightful! For the first time since attaining his fullstrength, Smash could test his ultimate. But at the momentthey were all tangled up in an ineffective configuration,unable to fight decisively.

Smash made a face, bulging his eyes and stretching hismouth wide open. "Yyrwil!" he yyrwiled.

The Gap Dragon made a face back, wrinkling up itssnout horrendously and crossing its eyes so far that thepupils exchanged places. "Rrooarw!" it rrooarwed.

Smash made a worse face, swallowing his nose and partof his low forehead. "Ggrummf!" he ggrummffed.

The dragon went him one better, perhaps two better,swallowing its snout up past the ears and partway down itsneck. "Ssstth!" it ssstthed.

The monster was outdoing him. Petulantly, Smash bit  jinto a rock and spit out a stream of graveL The dragon's  :

teeth were pointed, so it could not match that. Instead, ithoisted a petard of steam at him, the greasy ball of vaporcurling the hairs of his face and clogging his nostrils.

So much for the niceties. Now the real action com-menced. Smash threw himself into the sheer joy of combat,the fundamental delight of every true ogre. It had beensome time since he had crunched bones in earnest. Ofcourse, this dragon was mostly boneless, but the principleremained.

He punched the dragon in the snoat. This sort of punchcould put a fist-sized hole in an ironwood tree, but thedragon merely gave way before the force of it and was onlyslightly bloodied. Then the dragon struck back, snappingsidewise at Smash's arm. That sort of bite could lop amouthful of flesh from a behemoth, but the gauntlet ex-tended back far enough to catch the edge of the bite andstrike sparks from the teeth.

Then Smash boxed the dragon's right ear with his leftfist—and the ear squirted right off the skull and flew outof sight. The dragon winced; that smarted! But the monsterhardly needed that ear, and came back with a blast ofsteam that cooked the outer layer of the ogre's head.Smash's thick skull stopped the heat from penetrating tothe Eye Queue-corrupted brain—more was the pity, hethought.

So much for the second exchange of amenities. Smashhad had slightly the better of it this time, but the fight wasonly warming up. Now the pace intensified.

Smash took hold of the dragon's upper jaw with onehand, the lower jaw with another, and slowly forced thetwo apart. The dragon resisted, and its jaw muscles weremighty, well leveraged, and experienced, but it could notdirectly withstand the full brute force of a concentratingogre. Slowly the jaws separated.

The dragon whipped its body about. In a moment thesinuous length of it was wrapped about the ogre's torso,engulfing him anew. While Smash forced open the jaws,the dragon tightened its coils, constricting him.

All this was in slow motion, yet it was a race. WouldSmash rip the head apart first, or would the dragonsqueeze the juice out of him? The answer was uncertain.Smash was having trouble breathing; he was beginning to

lose strength. It seemed to him that this should not be hap-pening, or at least not this fast. But the dragon's jaws werenow quite far apart, and should soon break.

Neither ogre nor dragon would give. They remained,their strength in balance. The jaws were on the verge ofbreaking, the torso on the verge of smothering. Who wouldsuccumb first? It occurred to Smash that he might breakopen the dragon's jaw, but be unable to extricate himselffrom its convulsed coils and smother because he couldn'tbreathe. Or the dragon might crush him—but suffer a bro-ken jaw in Smash's dying effort. Both could lose this en-counter.

In the good old days before the Eye Queue vine hadfallen on him. Smash would not have wasted tediousthought on such a thing; he would merely have bashed onthrough, to kill and/or be killed, hardly caring which. Nowhe was cursed with the notion of meaning. To what pointwas this violence if neither participant survived?

It was discomfiting and un-ogrish, but Smash found hehad to change his tactic. This one had little promise ofsuccess, since it would not free him from the serpent's toils.He was in a dire strait, and bulling ahead would onlyworsen it.

He drew the dragon's head forward, toward his ownface. The dragon thought this meant Smash was weaken-ing, and went forward eagerly. In a moment, the dragonbelieved, it could chomp the ogre's face off. Its breathsteamed out, its woodsmoke fragrance toasting Smash'sskin. He tried to sneeze, but was unable to inhale becauseof the constriction in which he was held.

Sure of victory now, the dragon cranked its jaws margin-ally closer together and lunged. Smash deflected the thrustas much as he could and jerked his head to the side. Thedragon's head plunged down as Smash's hands let go—andthe huge wedge-teeth chomped savagely on the uppermostcoil. This was a device Smash had used on the tangle treewith good effect.

It took the Gap Dragon a moment to catch on. Mean-while, it chewed. It surely felt the bite, but did not yetrealize that this was its own doing, or that its teeth had notcontacted ogre flesh. It took a while for the difference intaste to register. The dragon wrenched its supposed prey

upward, driving the teeth in deeper. The coil loosened, giv-ing Smash half a gasp of breath.

Then at last the dragon realized what it was doing. Itsjaws began to open, to free itself from its own bite and toemit a honk of sheer pain and frustration—but Smash'stwo gauntleted hamhands came down on either side of it,clasping the snout, pressing it firmly closed on the meat.The jaw muscles were weaker this way; the dragon couldnot release its bite. Still, the ogre could not use his handsfor further attack, for the moment he let go, the jawswould open. It was another position of stalemate.

Blood welled out around the dragon's lower fangs anddripped off its chin, coating Smash's gauntlet. The fluidwas a deep purple hue, thick and gooey, smelling of ashesand carrion. It probably had caustic properties, but thegauntlet protected Smash's flesh, as it had when he heldthe basilisk. The centaur gifts were serving him well.

Now it was the dragon's turn to scheme. Dragons werenot the brightest creatures of Xanth; but, as with ogres,their brains were largely in their muscles, and they werecunning fighters. The dragon knew it could get nowhereunless it freed itself from its own bite, and knew that itsown coils anchored the ogre in place so that he could puthis clamp on that bite. By and by, it realized that if itreleased the ogre, the ogre would lack anchorage and couldthen be thrown off. So the dragon began laboriously uncoil-ing.

Smash held on, gasping more deeply as the constrictionabated. His strategy was getting him free—but it wouldfree the dragon, too. This fight was a long way from over!

At last the coils were gone. The dragon wrenched itsforward section away—and Smash's lower hand slipped onthe blood coating it, and he lost his hold.

Now they faced each other again, the dragon with blood-ied jaw and little jets of purple goo spurting from the deepfang-holes in its body, the ogre panting heavily from soreribs. On the surface Smash had had the better of thisround, but inside he doubted it. His rib cage was made ofogre's bones; nevertheless, it was hurting. Something hadbeen bent if not broken. He was no longer in top fightingcondition.

The dragon evidently had found the ogre to be stiffer

106 Ogre, Ogre

competition than anticipated. It made a feint at Smash, andSmash raised a fist. Then the dragon dived abruptly back,as if fleeing. Suspicious, Smash paused—then saw that thedragon was going after Fireoak the Hamadryad, who wasstill lying helplessly on the ground.

This was very bad form. It suggested that Smash was nolonger worth noticing as an opponent. His temper heatedand bent toward the snapping point.

Chem Centaur leaped to Fireoak's defense, interceptingthe dragon before Smash reoriented. She reared, her fore-hooves flashing in the air, striking at the dragon's snout.But she could not hope to balk such a monster for long.The Siren and John were running up to help, but Smashknew they could only get themselves in trouble.

He grabbed the dragon's tail again, this time bracinghimself firmly against the rocky ground so as not to beflipped over. The moving body took up the slack againwith a heavy shock that transmitted straight to the ogre'sbraced feet. The feet plowed into the ground, throwing upwakes of dirt and stones, then driving down deeper. Whenthe dragon finally halted, Smash was braced knee-deep atan angle in the ground. He was strong, but the dragon hadmass that mere strength couldn't halt instantly.

The dragon's nose had stopped a short distance from thehamadryad. Infuriated at this balk, the creature turnedagain, lunging at the ogre.

Smash exploded out of the ground, kicking dirt in thedragon's snoot. He reached for the jaws, but this time thedragon was wise enough to keep its mouth shut; it wantedno more prying open! It drove at the ogre with sealed jaws,trying to knock him down before taking a bite.

Smash boxed at the head, denting the metal scales hereand there and rebloodying the smashed ear-socket, butcould do no real damage. The dragon weaved and bobbed,presenting a tricky target, while gathering itself for somedevastating strike.

The ogre looked toward the assembled girls. "Get awayfrom here!" he bellowed. He wanted no more distractionsfrom the main event; one of them was sure to get inciden-tally gobbled by the dragon.

From the other side Tandy called, "I've found a ledge!

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It's out of reach of the dragon! We can use the rope toclimb to it while Smash destroys the dragon!"

She had boundless confidence in his prowess! Smashknew he was in the toughest encounter of his life. But hecould proceed with greater confidence the moment heknew the girls were safe. He looked where Tandy pointedand saw the ledge, about halfway up the steep slope. Therewas a pining tree on it, its mournful branches droopinggreenly, the sad needles hanging down. They would be ableto loop the rope about the trunk of this tree and haul them-selves up to it.

Then the dragon, taking advantage of Smash's distrac-tion, leaped at him. The ogre ducked, throwing up a fist inhis standard defensive ploy, but the dragon's mass bore himdown. The huge metal claws of the foremost set of feetraked at his belly, attempting to dismember him. Smashhad to fall on his back to avoid them—and the weight ofthe dragon landed on him. Now the stubby legs reached outon either side, the claws clutching the earth, anchoring thelong body. Smash was pinned.

He tried to get up, but lacked leverage. He reached outto grab a leg, but the dragon cunningly moved it out ofreach. Meanwhile, the sinuous body was moving elsewherealong its line, bringing another set of legs to bear. Thesewould soon attack the pinned ogre. It would be easy forthese free claws to spear through his flesh repeatedly, andsooner or later they would puncture a vital organ.

But Smash had resources of his own. He reached up toembrace the serpentine segment. He was just able to com-plet the circuit, his fingers linking above it. Now he hadhis leverage. He squeezed.

Ogres were notorious for several things: the manner inwhich their teeth crunched bones into toothpicks, the waytheir fists pulverized rocks, and the power of their battleembrace. A rock-maple tree would have gasped under thepressure Smash now applied. So did the Gap Dragon. It letout a steam-whistle of anguish.

But its body was flexible and compressible. When it hadbeen squeezed down to half its original diameter, Smashcould force it no farther without taking a new grip—andthe moment he released his present one, the body would

108 Ogre, Ogre

spring out again. His compression was not enough. Thedragon was in pain, but still able to function; now it wasagain bringing its other claws into play. That would betrouble, for the outsides of Smash's arms were exposed.They could be clawed to pieces.

He drew on another weapon—his teeth. They did notcompare with those of the dragon, but they were formid-able enough in their own fashion. He pretended the under-belly before him was a huge, tasty bone and started in.

The first chomp netted him only a mouthful of scales.He spit them out and bit again. This time he reached theunderlayer of reptilian skin, still pretty tough, but nomatch for an ogre's teeth. He ripped out a section, exposingthe muscular layer beneath. He sank his teeth into that.

Again the monster whistled with pain. It struggled todraw back—but Smash's embrace held it firm. The com-pression made it worse; the ogre's teeth could take in twiceas much actual flesh with each bite.

The dragon's claws ripped out of the ground. It humpedits midsection, lifting Smash into the air. The huge headswung around, blasting forth steam. Now the ogre had tolet go, for the back of his neck could not withstand muchsteam-cooking. He dropped off, spitting out a muscle. Itwould have been nice to chew the thing up and swallow it,but he needed his teeth clear for business, not pleasure.

The dragon was doubly bloodied now, yet still full offight. It snorted a voluminous and slightly blood-fleckedcloud of steam, charged Smash—and sheered off at thelast moment, leaving the ogre smiting air with his fists.The serpentine torso whizzed by faster and faster, until thetail struck with a hard crack against Smash's chest.

It was quite a smack. Smash was rocked back. But hisorange centaur jacket was made to protect him from physi-cal attack and it withstood the lash of the sharp tail. Other-wise Smash could have been badly gashed, or even cut inhalf. The tail, at its extremity. Was long and thin, like awhip, with edges like a feathered blade. Smash wanted nomore of that.

He spied a boulder half buried in the ground. He rippedit from its mooring and hurled it at the dragon. The dragondodged, but Smash threw another, and a third. Eventuallyhe was bound to score, and the dragon knew it.

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The dragon ducked behind a small ridge of rock anddisappeared. Smash lobbed a boulder at it without effect.Cautiously he moved up and peered behind the ridge—andfound nothing. The dragon was gone.

He bent to study the ground. Ah—there was a holeslanting down—a tunnel the diameter of the dragon. Themonster had fled underground!

He dislodged a larger boulder and rolled it to cover thehole. That would seal in the' dragon, at least until Tandyand the others could vacate the Gap Chasm. It was too badhe hadn't been able to finish the fight, but it had been anexcellent one, and such ironies did occur in the wilds ofXanth.

Then two sets of claws came down from behind him.The dragon had emerged from another hole and ambushedhim from the rear! That was what came of getting carelessin the enemy's home territory.

Smash tried to turn, but the claws landed on his shoulderand hauled him backward to the opening jaws. This timehe could not attack those jaws with his hands; he could notreach them. He was abruptly doomed.

Tandy appeared beside the boulder. "Look out, Smash!"she cried unnecessarily.

"Get away from here!" Smash shouted as he felt thedragon's steam on the back of his neck.

But Tandy's face was all twisted up in terror or horroror anger; her eyes were squeezed almost shut, and her bodywas stiff. She paid no attention to him. Then her armmoved as she threw something invisible. Smash, realizing» her intent almost too late, dropped to his knees, though thetalons dug cruelly into his shoulder.

The tantrum brushed over his head, making his furstand on end. The dragon caught the full brunt of it in thesnoot and froze in place, half a jet of steam stuck in onenostril.

Smash turned and stood. The Gap Dragon's eyes wereglazed. The monster had been stunned by the tantrum."Quick, run!" Tandy cried. "It won't hold that dragonlong!"

Run? That was hardly the way of an ogre! "You run; Ishall bind the dragon."

no

Ogre, Ogre

"You lunkhead!" she protested. "Nothing will hold itlong!"

Smash picked up the dragon's whiplike tail. He threadedthe tip of it into the smash-ruined ear, through the head,and out the other ear, drawing a length of it through. Thenhe used a finger to poke a hole in the boulder, and a sec-ond hole angling in to meet the first inside the stone. Hepassed the tail tip in one hole and out the other, exactly asif this were another dragon-head. Then he fashioned anogre hangknot and tied the tail to itself. "Now I'll go," hesaid, satisfied.

They walked to the cliff face. Behind them the GapDragon revived. It shook its head to clear itself of confu-sion—and discovered it was tied. It tried to draw back—and the tail pulled taut against the boulder.

"A little puzzle for the dragon," Smash explained. Pri-vately, he was nettled because he had had to have help tonullify the monster; that was not an ogre's way. But theinfernal common sense foisted on him by the Eye Queuereminded him that without an ogre the girls would havevery little chance to survive and the hamadryad's treewould be cut down. So he beat down his stupid pride andproceeded to the next challenge.

Chem, John, Fireoak, and the Siren rested on the ledge.The rope dangled down carelessly.

"All right, girls, it's over," Tandy called. "Ready for usto come up?"

No one answered. It was as if they were asleep.

"Hey, wake up!" Tandy cried, irritated. "We have to beon our way, and there's a long climb ahead!"

The Siren stirred. "What does it matter?" she asked dole-fully.

Smash and Tandy exchanged glances, one cute girlglance for one brute ogre glance. What was this?

"Are you all right. Siren?" Smash called.

The Siren got to her feet, standing precariously near theedge of the ledge. "I'm so sad," she said, wiping a tear,"Life has no joy."

"No joy?" Tandy asked, bewildered. "Smash tied the'dragon. We can go on now. That's wonderful!"

"That's nothing," the Siren said. "I will end it all." Andshe stepped off the ledge.

Ogre, Ogre                     111

Tandy screamed. Smash leaped to catch the Siren. For-tunately, she was coming right toward him; all he had to dowas intercept her fall and swing her about and set hersafely on her feet.

"She tried to kill herself!" Tandy cried, appalled.

Something was definitely wrong. Smash looked up at thepining tree. The other three sat drooping, like the tree it-self.

Then he caught on. "The pining tree! It makes peoplepine!"

"Oh, no!" Tandy lamented. "They've been there toolong, getting sadder and sadder. Now they're suicidal!"

"We must get them down from there," Smash said.

The Siren stirred. "Oh, my—I was so sad!"

"You were near the pining tree," Tandy informed her."We didn't realize what it did."

The Siren mopped up her tear-stained face. "So that wasit! That's a crying shame."

"I'll climb up and carry them down," Smash said.

"Then you'll get sad," Tandy said. "We don't need a sui-cidal ogre failing on our heads."

"It does take a while for full effect," the Siren said."The longer I sat, the sadder I got. It didn't strike all atonce."

"That's our answer," Tandy said. "I'll go up and pushpeople off the ledge, and Smash can catch them. Quickly,before I get too sad myself."

"What about Chem?" the Siren asked. "She's too heavyfor Smash to catch safely."

"We'll have to lower her on the rope."

They decided to try it. Tandy climbed the rope, pickedup the weeping John, and threw her down. Smash caughtthe fairy with one hand, avoiding contact with her delicatewings. Then Tandy pushed Fireoak on the ledge. Finallyshe tied the end of the rope about the centaur's waist,passed the rope behind the tree, and forced her to backdown while Smash played out the other end of the ropegradually. It was slow, but it worked.

Except for one thing. Tandy remained beside the tree,since the rope was now taken up by the centaur, and thetree was getting to her. She wandered precariously near theedge, her tears flowing. Then she stepped off.

112 Ogre, Ogre

If Smash moved to catch her, he would let Chem fall. Ifhe did not—

He figured it out physically before solving it mentally.He held the rope in his right hand while jumping and reach-ing out with his left hand. He caught Tandy by her smallwaist and drew her in to his furry body without lettingChem slip.

Tandy buried her face in his pelt and cried with aban-don. He knew it was only the effect of the pining tree, buthe felt sorry for her misery. All he could do was hold her.

"That was a nice maneuver, Smash," the Siren said,coming up to take the girl from his arm.

"I couldn't let her fall," he said gruffly.

"Of course you couldn't." But the Siren seemed thought-ful. It was as if she understood something he didn't.

Now they were all down and safe—but unfortunately atthe bottom of the Gap Chasm. The Gap Dragon was stilltwitching, trying to discover a way to free itself withoutpulling out either its brains or its tail. Which was moreimportant wasn't clear.

John revived. "Oh, my, that was awful!" she exclaimed."Now I feel so much better, I could just fly!" And she tookoff, flying in a loop.

"Well, she can get out of the chasm," the Siren said.

Smash looked at the fairy, and at the dragon, and at thepining tree. There was a small ironwood tree splitting thedifference between the pining tree and the top of the cliffwall. He had an idea. "John, can you fly to the top of thechasm carrying the rope?"

The fairy looked at the rope. "Way too heavy for me."

"Could you catch it and hold it if I hurl the end up toyou?"

She inspected it again. "Maybe, if I had something toanchor me," she said doubtfully. "I'm not very strong."

"That ironwood tree."

"I could try."

Smash tied an end of the rope to a rock, then hurled therock up past the ironwood tree. John flew up and held therope at the tree. Now Smash walked over to the GapDragon, which was still trying to free itself from the boul-der without hurting its head or its tail in the process.Smash knocked it on the head with a fist, and it quieted

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down; the dragon was no longer in fighting condition andcouldn't roll with the punch.

Smash untied the tail, disconnected it from the boulder,unthreaded the head, and tied the tip of the tail to thenether end of the rope. Then he dragged the inert dragonto the base of the chasm wall and placed its tail so that itreached well up toward the top.

"Now drop that stone." he called.

The fairy did so. The rock pulled the slack rope up andaround the ironwood trunk. When it began to draw on thedragon's tail, the weight of the rope wasn't enough. Thefairy flew down and sat on the rock, adding weight, and itdropped down farther. Finally Smash was able to jump andcatch hold of it.

John flew back to the ground while Smash hauled thedragon up by the tail. But soon the weight was too much;

instead of hauling the dragon up. Smash found himselfdangling. This was a matter of mass, not strength.

"We can solve that," Chem said, shaking off her re-maining melancholy. She had received a worse dose of pin-ing than the others, perhaps because of her size and be-cause she had been closest to the tree. "Use the boulder forballast."Smash rolled the boulder over. He hooked a toe in thehole he had punched in it, then drew on the rope again.This anchorage enabled him to drag the dragon farther upthe slope. When it got to the point where both ogre andboulder were dangling in the air, Chem added her consid-erable weight to the effort by balancing on the boulder andclinging to Smash. "I'll bet you've never been hugged likethis before," she remarked.

Smash pondered that while he hauled on the rope, tryingto get the dragon up. Actually, he had embraced his friendChet, her older brother, and Amolde the Archivist, themiddle-aged centaur who was now in charge of liaisonswith Mundania. But those had been males, and his recentcompany had attuned him somewhat more to the differ-ence of females. Chem was not of his species, of course,but she was clinging to him with extraordinary constrictionbecause it was hard for her human arms to support herequine body. She was pleasant to be close to; her presenthug was almost like that of an ogress.

Ogre, Ogre

All these girls were pleasant to be close to, he realized asthe Eye Queue curse enabled him to think the matterthrough. Each had her separate female fashion, sort ofrounded and soft, structured for holding. But it seemedbest not to let them know that he noticed. They allowedthemselves to get close to him only because they regardedhim as a woolly monster who had no perception of theirnonedible attributes.

He hauled on the rope, bringing the dragon up anothernotch. Now Smash was approaching the limit of hisstrength, for the dragon was a heavy monster and therewas a long way to haul. When the job got near the end,ogre, boulder, and centaur were all getting light; any moreand they would be swinging in the air.

But at last it was done. Now the Gap Dragon was sus-pended by its tail from the ironwood tree, its snout justtouching the level ground at the base of the chasm. Smashclimbed the rope to the tree, caught the trailing tip of thedragon's tail, and knotted it about the tree. Then, clingingto the tree, he untied the rope and flung it upward over thetip of the cliff. He had had the foresight to leave Chemand the boulder anchoring the rope at ground level beforedoing this.

John flew up and caught the rope. She dragged the endto a tree beyond the chasm and tied it firmly with a fairyknot. Smash climbed the rest of the way up and stood atlast on the northern side of the Gap Chasm. Now they hadtheir escape route.

"Climb the dragon, climb the rope," he called down. Hisvoice echoboomed back and forth across the chasm, butfinally settled down to the bottom, where they could hearit.                                    ••

Tandy came up, placing her feet carefully against thedragon's metal scales, which tended to fold outward be-cause of its inverted position, making the footing better.The Siren followed, not quite as agile.

Chem and Fireoak were more of a problem. The centaur'had let herself down readily enough, but lacked the muscleeither to climb the dragon vertically or to haul herself upalong the rope to the top. And the hamadryad was tooweak even to make the attempt.

Smash could handle that. He slid down the rope and

Ogre, Ogre                     115

dragon, picked up the dryad, and carried her to the top.Then he returned for the centaur. He had her hold on tohim again, circling her arms about his waist while hehauled himself up by hands and feet. Progress was slow,for her hooves could not grip the 'dragon's scales comfort-ably, but eventually they made it to the ironwood tree.

At this point the nature of the problem changed. Therope went straight up to the overhanging lip, and Smashdoubted Chem could hold on to him while he climbed that.Also, he was tiring, and might be unable to haul himselfand her up, using only his arms. So he parked her,wedged between the ironwood trunk and the cliff, while herested and considered.

But he was not provided much time for either. The GapDragon, quiescent until now, stirred. It was a tough ani-mal, and even a punch in the head by the fist of an ogrecould not put it to sleep indefinitely. It twisted about,trying to discover what was happening.

"I think you had better climb back up your rope now,"Chem said.

"Tie the end about your waist; I will draw you up fromabove."

"I will make a harness," she decided. She looped therope around her body in various places. "This way I candefend myself."

Smash clambered up the taut rope while the dragonthrashed about with increasing vigor. As Smash crossed thecliff lip, he saw the dragon's head mining back up alongits body, toward the centaur filly. That could certainly betrouble!

Atop the cliff, Smash took hold of the rope and drew itup. The weight was great, but the rope was magicallystrong. He had to brace carefully, lest he be pulled backover the cliff. Again he was reminded that strength alonewas not sufficient; anchorage was at times more impor-tant. He solved the problem by looping the rope about hisown waist so that he could not be drawn away from thetree and could exert his full force.

. John was hovering near the lip. "That dragon has spot-ted Chem," she announced with alarm. "It's reaching up. Idon't know whether it can . . ."

Smash kept on hauling. He could go only so fast, since

116 Ogre, Ogre

he had to take a fresh grip each time and tense for therenewed effort. He hated to admit it, even to himself, buthe was tiring more rapidly. What had become of his ogreendurance?

"Yes, the dragon can reach her," John reported. "It'slunging, snapping. She's fending it off neatly with herhooves, but she's swinging around without much leverage.She can't really hurt it. It's trying again—you'd better lifther up higher, Smash!"

Smash was trying, but now his best efforts yielded onlysmall, slow gains. His giant ogre muscles were solidifyingwith fatigue.

"Now the dragon is trying to climb its own tail, to gethigher, so it can chomp the rope apart or something," thefairy said. "This time she won't be able to stop it. Pull herup quickly!"

But try as he might, Smash could not. The rope began toslip through his exhausted hands.

The Siren leaped up. "I have a knife!" she cried. "I'll godown and cut off the dragon's tail so it wiB drop to thebottom of the chasm, out of reach!"

"No!" Tandy protested. "You'll have no way to get upagain!"

"I'll do it!" John said. "Quick—give me the knife!"

The Siren gave her the knife. The fairy dropped out ofsight beyond the ledge. Smash tried to rouse himself to re-sume hauling on the rope, but his body was frozen into adeathlike rigor. He could only listen.

The Siren lay on the bank, her head over the cliff, look-ing down. "The dragon's head is almost there," she re-ported. "John is down near the tree. She's afraid of thatmonster; I can tell by the way she skirts it. But she's ap-proaching the tied tail. Now she's sawing on it with theknife. She's not very strong, and those scales are tough.The dragon doesn't see her; it's orienting on Chem. Oops—now it sees John. That knife is beginning to hurt it as shedigs through the scales. It's slow work! The dragon is turn-ing its head about, opening its jaws. Chem is slipping downfarther. She's kicking at the dragon's neck with her fore-feet, trying to distract it. Now she's throwing dirt at it fromthe chasm wall. John is still sawing at the tail. I think she's

r

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down to real flesh now. The dragon is really angry. It'sblasting out steam—Oh!" She paused, horrified.

"What happened?" Tandy demanded, her face pale withstrain.

"The steam—John—" The Siren took a ragged breath."The steam shriveled her wings, both of them. They're justtatters. John's clinging to the tree trunk. Still sawing at thetail. What awful courage she has! She must be in excruciat-^ ing pain."

The fairy had lost her newly recovered wings and wassuffering terribly—because of Smash's failure. In an agonyof remorse, he forced strength through his frozen musclesand hauled again on the rope. Now it came up, its burdenseeming lighter, and soon the centaur was over the lip ofthe chasm and scrambling to safety. But what of John?

"There goes the dragon!" the Siren cried. "She did it!She cut through the tail! There's dragon blood all over herand she's lost the knife, but the dragon's bouncing downthe slope in a cloud of dust and steam. Now the monster'srolling at the base. It's galumphing away!"

"What of John?" Tandy cried.

"She's sitting there by the ironwood tree. Her eyes areclosed. I don't think she quite comprehends what has hap-pened. Her wings—"

Tandy was fashioning the rope into a smaller harness."Lower this to her. We'll draw her up!"

Smash merely stood where he was, listening. His briefsurge of strength had been exhausted; now he could donothing. He felt ashamed for his weakness and the horribleconsequence of it, but had no further resource. John hadthought she would be safe in the company of an ogre!

Chem drew the fairy up. Smash saw John huddled in theharness. Her once-lovely wings, with the blossoming flowerpatterns, were now melted amorphous husks, useless forflying. Would they ever grow back? It seemed unlikely.

"Well, we crossed the chasm," Tandy said. She was nothappy. None of them was. One of their number had losther invaluable wings, another was too wasted to stand, andSmash was too tired to move. If this was typical of thehazards they faced, traversing central Xanth, how wouldthey ever make it the rest of the way?

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"Well, now," a new voice declared.Smash turned his head dully to view the speaker. It wasa gnarled, ugly goblin—at the head of a fair-sized troop of

goblins.

Goblins hated people of any type. The strait had become

yet more dire.

Chapter 7. Lunatic Fringe

If you fight, we'll shove you all over the brinkwithout your rope," the goblin leader said. He was astunted black creature about John's height, with a hugehead, hands, and feet. His short limbs seemed twisted, as ifthe bones had been broken and reset many times, and hisface was similarly uneven, with one eye squinting, theother round, the nose bulbous, and the mouth crooked. Bygoblin standards, he was handsome.

The goblins spread out to surround the party. Theypeered at the ogre, centaur, hamadryad, fairy. Siren, andgirl as if all were supreme curiosities. "You crossed theGap?" the leader asked.

Tandy took it upon herself to answer. "What right haveyou to question us? I know your kind from the caves. Youdon't have any useful business with civilized folk."

The leader considered her. "Whom do you know in thecaves, girl-thing?"

"Everybody who is anybody," she retorted. "The de-mons, the Diggle-worm, the Brain Coral—"

The leader seemed fazed. "Who are you?"

"I am Tandy, daughter of Crombie the Soldier and Jewelthe Nymph. You know who sets out those black opals yougoblins steal to give to your goblin girls! My mother, that'swho. Without her there wouldn't be any gems of any kindto find anywhere."

There was a muttering commotion. "You have adequateconnections," the goblin leader grudged. "Very well, wewon't eat you. You may go, girl-thing."

"What of my friends?" Tandy asked suspiciously.

119

120 Ogre, Ogre

"They have no such connections. Their mothers don'tplant gems in the rocks. We'll cook them tonight."

"Oh, no, you won't! My friends go with me!"

"If that's the way you want it," the goblin said indiffer-ently.

"That's the way I want it."                   *

"Come this way, then. You'll all go in the pot together."

"That's not what I meant!" Tandy cried.

"It isn't?" The goblin seemed surprised. "You said youwanted to be with your friends."

"But not in the pot!"

The goblin shook his head in confusion. "Femaleschange their minds a lot. Exactly what do you want?"

"I want us all to continue our trip north through Xanth,"Tandy said, enunciating clearly. "I can't do it alone. I don'tknow anything about surface Xanth. I need the ogre to pro-tect me. If he weren't worn out from fighting the GapDragon and hauling us all up out of the Gap, he'd becramming all of you into the pot!"

"Nonsense. Ogres don't use pots."

Tandy huffed herself up into the resemblance of a tan-trum. But before she completed the process, a goblin lieu-tenant sidled up to whisper in the leader's ear. The leadernodded. "Maybe so," he agreed. He turned back to Tandy."You are five females, guarded by the tired ogre?"

"Yes," Tandy agreed guardedly.          '

"How many others has he eaten?"

"None!" Tandy responded indignantly. "He doesn't eatfriends!""He can't be much of an ogre, then."

"He beat up the Gap Dragon!"

The goblin considered. "There is that." He came to adecision. "My name is Gorbage Goblin. I control this sec-tion of the Rim. But I have a daughter, and we are exoga-mous."

"What?" Tandy asked, bewildered.

"Exogamous, twit. Girls must marry outside their hometribes. But there is no contiguous goblin tribe; we are apartfrom the main nation of goblins. The dragons extendedtheir territory recently, cutting us off." He scowled. "Theother goblins keep forgetting us, the slugbrains. I don't

Irnnw whv."

Ogre, Ogre                     121

Smash knew why. It was the forget-spell laid on the GapChasm. These goblins lived too close to it, so suffered aperipheral effect.

"So my daughter Goldy Goblin must cross to anothertribe," Gorbage grumbled. "But travel beyond our territoryis now hazardous to the health. She needs a guard."

Tandy's face lighted with eventual comprehension. "Youwant us to take your daughter with us?"

"To the next goblin tribe, north of here. Beyond thedragons, in the midst of the five forbidden regions, nearthe firewall. Yes."

Five forbidden regions? Firewall? Smash wonderedabout that. It didn't sound like the sort of territory to takefive or six delicate girls through.

"You will let us go if we do that?" Tandy asked."You and the ogre."

Tandy's face set. She was a very stubborn girl at times."All of us."

The goblin leader wavered. "That's a lot to ask. Wehaven't had fresh meat in several days."

"I don't care if you never have fresh meat again!" thegirl flared. "You can cook up zombies if you get hungry. Iwant all my friends."

"It's only one daughter you're taking north, after all.""Remember the feminine wiles," the Siren murmured.Tandy considered. "The ogre can't do all the guarding,"she said reasonably. "When he fights off a big dragon or atangle tree or something, he gets tired. Then he has to rest,and someone else stands guard, like the centaur. If wecross a lake, the Siren scouts it out first. We never knowwhose skill will be useful." She paused, then with an effortturned on extra charm, "it you really want your daughterto travel safely—"

Gorbage capitulated with bad grace. "Oh, very well. Allof you go. It's a bad deal for me, but Goldy will slaughterme if I don't get her matched soon. She's a cussheaded lass,like all her kind."

Smash was amazed. Tandy had, with a little timely ad-vice from the Siren, talked them out of disaster and gottenthem all free passage through goblin-infested territory. Al-ready his own strength was filtering 'back; all he needed

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Ogre, Ogre

was a little rest. But there was no longer any need for Vio-lence.

Goldy Goblin turned out to be a petite, amazingly pretty

lass. The goblin females were as lovely as the goblin maleswere ugly. "Thank you so much for taking me," she saidpolitely. "Is there anything I can do in return?"

Tandy had the grace to take this seriously. "We have tostop by a fireoak tree in this vicinity. If you could show us

the best route to it—""Certainly. There's only one fireoak hereabouts, with a

resident hamadryad nymph—" Goldy paused, spying Fire-oak. "Isn't that she?"

"Yes. She's trying to save her tree. We must get her back

to it as soon as possible."

"I know the way. But the path to it goes by a hypno-

gourd patch. So you have to be careful."

"I don't want to go near the gourds!" Tandy cried, horri-fied.

But Smash remembered his contact with the coffin in-side the other gourd. Was it possible that—? "I want a

gourd," he said.

The Siren was perplexed. "Why would you want a terri-ble thing like that?"

"Something I may have forgotten in there."The Siren frowned but dropped the subject.They trekked on. Smash carrying the hamadryad. Hetried not to show it, but his strength had returned only par-tially. Fireoak was light, the kind of burden he could nor-mally balance on his little finger without effort, but nowhe had to control his breathing, lest he pant so loudly hecall attention to himself. He would be no help at all if theyhappened on another dragon. Maybe he just needed a goodmeal and a night's sleep. Yet it had never before taken himso long to recover from exertion. He suspected something

was wrong, but he didn't "know what.

They came to the region of hypnogourds. The vinessprawled abundantly, and gourds were all about. Smashstared at them, half mesmerized. He had thought his soullost when the Siren smashed the other gourd—but was itpossible that the gourd had been a mere window on theotherworld reality? His Eye Queue was crazy enough to

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think this was so. Could he use another gourd to return tothat world and fight for his soul?

He felt small hands on his arm. "What is it. Smash?"Tandy asked. "I'm deathly afraid of those things, but youseem fascinated. What's with you and those awful gourds?"

He answered, not fully conscious of his situation. "Imust go fight the Night Stallion."

"A Dark Horse?"

"The ruler of the nightmares. He has a lien on my soul."

"Oh, no! Is that how you rescued my soul?"

Smash snapped out of it. He hadn't meant to say any-thing about the lien to Tandy. "I'm gibbering. Ignore it."

"So that's why you wanted another gourd," the Siren said."You had unfinished business there! I didn't realize . . ."

Now the goblin girl approached. "The ogre's been into agourd? I've seen that happen before. Some people escapeunscathed; some lose their souls; some get only halfwayfree. We lost a lot of goblins before we caught on. Now weuse those gourds as punishment. Thieves are set at a peep-hole for an hour; they usually escape with a bad scare andnever thieve again. Murderers are set there for a day; theyoften lose their souls. It varies; some people are clevererthan others, and some luckier. The lien is like a delayedsentence; a month or two and it's all over."

"A lien!" the Siren said. "How long for you. Smash?"

"Three months," he replied glumly.

"And you said nothing!" she cried indignantly. "Whatkind of a creature are you?" But she answered herself im-mediately. "A self-sacrificing one. Smash, you should havetold us."

"Yes," Tandy agreed faintly. "I never realized—"

"How can a person nullify such a lien?" the Siren asked,getting practical.

"He has to go back in and fight," Goldy said. "If hedoesn't, he just gets weaker, bit by bit, as the Stallion callsin the soul. It's too late to fight, once the lien is due. Hehas to do it early, while he has most of his strength."

"But a person can redeem himself if he goes in early?"the Siren asked.

"Sometimes," the goblin girl said. "Maybe one out often. One of our old goblins is supposed to have done it a

124 Ogre, Ogre

long time ago in his youth. We're not sure we believe him.He mumbles about trials of fear and pain and pride andsuch-like, making no sense at all. But it is theoretically pos-sible to win."

"So that's why Smash has gotten so weak," the Sirensaid. "He was using his strength as if he had plenty tospare, but he has an illness of the soul."

"I know about that," Fireoak breathed.

"I didn't know!" Tandy said, clouding up. "Oh, it's allmy fault! I never would have taken my soul back if—"

"I didn't know, either," the Siren said, calming her. "ButI should have suspected. Maybe I did suspect; I just didn'tpursue the thought fast enough. I forgot that Smash is nolonger a simple-minded ogre; he has the devious EyeQueue contamination, making him react more like humanfolk."

"The curse of human intellect, replacing the primevalbeastly innocence," Tandy agreed. "I, too, should have re-alized—"

"Tandy, we've got to help Smash destroy that lien!"

"Yes!" Tandy agreed emphatically. "We can't leave himto the law of the lien."

Smash almost smiled, despite the seriousness of the situa-tion. During his travels with Prince Dor, he had encoun-tered the law of the loin; was this related?

"I'll help," Goldy said.

The Siren frowned. "What is your interest? Your tribe wasgoing to eat us all."

"How can I get to another goblin tribe if I don't have astrong ogre to clear the way? I do know a little bit aboutthe matter."

"I suppose you do have a practical interest," the Sirenagreed. "We all need the ogre, until we find our own indi-vidual situations. What do you know about the gourds thatmight help?"

"Our people have reported details of the gourd geogra-phy. It's the same for every gourd; they're all identicalinside. But each person enters at a different place, and it'spossible to get lost. So it is best to carry a line of string tomark the way."

"But a person is out the moment his contact with thepeephole is broken! How can he get lost?"

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"It's not that sort of lost," Goldy said. "There's a lot ofterritory in there, and some pretty strange effects. Sometalk of graves, others of mirrors. A person always returnsto the spot he left, and the time he left, no matter how longhe's been away from it; a break in the sequence is only aninterruption, not a change. If he's lost in gourdland, he'sstill lost when he returns there, even if he's been a longtime out of his gourd. He doesn't know where he's goingbecause he doesn't know where he's been. But if he stringsthe string, it'll mark where he's been, and he'll know themoment he crosses his trail. And that's the secret."

Smash was getting quite interested. He had been out ofhis gourd for some time, but apparently could still return."What secret?"

"The Night Stallion is always in the last place a personlooks, in the gourd," the goblin girl explained. "So all youhave to do to reach him is always look in a new place—never in a place you've been before; that's a waste of timeand effort. You are apt to get caught in an endless loop,and then you are really lost. You may never find him ifyou rehash your old route."

"You do know something about it!" Tandy agreed. "Butsuppose Smash threads the maze, finds the Night Stal-lion—and is too weak to fight him?"

"Oh, it's not that sort of strength he needs," the goblingirl said. "We've had physically strong goblins go in, andphysically weak ones, and the weak ones do just as well.All kinds lose in the gourd. Physical strength may even bea liability. Destroying the facilities does not destroy thecommitment. Only defeating the Stallion does that, on theStallion's own terms."

"What are the Stallion's terms?"

Goldy shrugged. "No one knows. Our one surviving gob-lin refuses to tell, assuming he knows. He just sort of turnsa little grayer. I think there is no way to find out except toface the creature."

"I think we have enough to go on," Tandy said. "Let'stake a gourd along. We have to get to the fireoak tree be-fore the lunatic-fringe-spell gives out." She went to harvesta gourd, her concern for Smash overriding her fear of thething.

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"I think the peephole is a lunatic fringe," the Siren mut-tered.

They moved on. Smash pondered what the goblin girlhad said. If physical strength was not important in thestruggle with the Night Stallion, why was it important tojoin this contest early, before weakness progressed too far?Was that a contradiction or merely a confusion? He con-cluded that it was the latter. There was weakness of thebody and of the spirit; both might fade together, but theywere not identical. Smash was physically weak now be-cause he had overextended himself; otherwise it shouldhave taken him three months to fade. His soul had proba-bly suffered relatively little so far. But if he waited till theend of the lien term to meet the Stallion, then his soulwould be weak, and he would lose the nonphysical contest.Yes, that seemed to make sense.Things didn't have to makesense, with magic, but it helped.

They arrived at a pleasant glade. Within it was a crazysort of shimmer that made Smash feel a little crazy himself;

he turned his eyes away.

"My tree!" the hamadryad cried, suddenly reviving.Smash set her down. "Where?"

"There! Behind the lunatic fringe!" She seemed to growstronger instant by instant and in a moment pranced intothe glade. Her body wavered and vanished.

"I guess the spell is still holding," Tandy said. She fol-lowed Fireoak, carrying the gourd, and disappeared simi-larly. The others went the same route.

When Smash contacted the fringe, he felt a momentarysurge of dizziness; then he was through. There before himwas the tree, a medium-large fireoak, its leaves blazing inthe late afternoon sunlight. The hamadryad was hugging itstrunk in ecstasy, her body almost indistinguishable from it,and her color was returning. She had rejoined her soul. Thetree, too, seemed to be glowing, and leaves that had beenwilting were now forging back into health. Evidently it hadmissed her also. There was something very touching aboutthe love of nymph and tree for each other.

Tandy approached him, her blue eyes soulful. "Smash, ifI had known—" She choked up. She shoved the gourd athim.

"We'll let you go into it until the lunatic fringe fades andthe people attack this tree," the Siren said. "Maybe you'llhave time to conquer the Night Stallion and regain yourfull strength." She produced a ball of string that the ha-madryad must have had stored in her tree. "Use this so youwon't get lost in there,"

"But first eat something," Chem said, bringing an arm-ful of fruits. "And get a night's sleep."

"No. I want to settle this now," Smash said.

"Oh, please do at least eat something 1" Tandy pleaded."You can eat a lot in a hurry."

True words—and he was hungry. Ogres were usuallyhungry. So he crammed a bushel of whole fruits into hismouth and gulped them down, ogre-fashion, and drank along pull of water from the spring at the base of the tree.

As the sun dropped down behind the forest, singeing thedistant tips of trees. Smash took leave of the six females asif setting out on a long and hazardous trek. Then he settleddown against the trunk of the tree, put the gourd in his lap,and applied his right eye to the peephole.

Instantly he was back in the gourd world. He stood be-fore the crypt, having just gotten up from his snooze.Tandy was not there; for a moment he had feared that shewould be locked into this adventure with him, since shehad been here before, but of course she was free now.

A chill wind cut around the stonework, ruffling his fur.The landscape was bleak: all gravestones and dying weedsand dismal dark sky. "Beautiful!" he exclaimed. "I would

like to stay here forever."

Then his Eye Queue, in its annoying fashion, forced himto amend his statement mentally. He would like to stayhere forever after he rescued his soul from the lien andregained his full strength and saved the hamadryad's treeand had gotten Tandy and all the others to wherever theywere going and found his Answer from the Good Magi-cian. After these details, then this paradise of the gourdwould be a nice retirement spot.

He had been afraid he would find himself somewhereelse and be unable, after all, to pursue his quest to its close.Despite what the goblin girl had said, this was a differentgourd, and might not know where his adventure in the last

128 Ogre, Ogre

gourd had ended. Now he was reassured, and confidentthat he could locate the Night Stallion and abate the lien.After all, he was an ogre, wasn't he?

He held his ball of string, since he had willed it to ac-company him, but again he had forgotten to bring hisgauntlets or orange jacket. He backtracked to the back ofthe haunted house and anchored one end of the string to apost, then crossed the graveyard to the far gate, letting thestring unravel behind. It was a good-sized ball, so he wasconfident he would have plenty to mark his way.

A skeleton came out to see what was going on; Smashmade a horrendous face at it, and the thing fled so fast itsbones rattled. Yes, the bone-folk remembered him here!

Beyond the gate was a broad, bleak, open plain illumi-nated by ghastly, pale white moonlight. Black, ugly cloudsscudded horrendously across the dismal sky, forming darkpicture-shapes that resembled trolls, goblins, and ogres.Naturally the other creatures were fleeing before the ogre-shapes. Smash was delighted; this was an even better scenethan the last! Whoever had set up this gourd world had hadogre tastes in mind.

Where should he go now? It was not his purpose to dallyamidst the delights of the terrain, but to locate the NightStallion. Yet he knew that he would have to cover a lot ofterritory before he reached the last place to look. So he hadbetter move rapidly anywhere, getting the ground covered.

He tromped forth, straight across the beautifully barrenplain. The cracked ground shuddered pleasantly under theimpact of his feet. He was regaining his strength. Yet nowhe knew, thanks to the goblin girl, that physical strengthwas not necessarily what it took to prevail here. He hadused it to cow the voice in the coffin, forcing it to releaseTandy's soul—but had suffered the compromise of his ownsoul. Probably the coffin had given him nothing that hadnot already been allocated; he had fooled himself, thinkingan ogre's power would scare the dead. The curse of the EyeQueue was making him see uncomfortable truths!

Yet perhaps he should not take this revelation on faith,either. He could go back and rattle the coffin some more,and determine just how much it feared his violence. Afterall, the skeletons now fled from him. No—that was atemptation to be avoided, for it would cause him to back-

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track his own trail, the one thing he needed to avoid doing.Smash continued resolutely forward.

Black dots appeared on the bleak horizon. Quickly theyexpanded, racing toward him on beating hooves. The night-mares! This was where they stayed by day—here, wherenight was eternal.

The mares were handsome animals, absolutely black,with flaring manes, flying tails, and darkly glowing eyes.Their limbs were sleekly muscular, and they moved withthe velocity of thought. In moments they surrounded him,galloping around him in a circle, squealing wamingly.They did not want him going the way he was going. Butsince the Night Stallion did not seem to be among them, hehad to proceed.

Smash ignored their warning. He tromped onward—andtheir circle stayed with him despite his speed. Experimen-tally he dodged to one side, and the circle remained cen-tered on him. He leaped, and the circle leaped with him.Just as he had thought, these were magical creatures, ori-enting magically; the feet of a dream-horse had no essentialconnection with the ground. Prince Dor had once men-tioned escaping the nightmares by sleeping on a cloud, be-yond their reach, but probably Prince Dor had not had anybad dreams scheduled that night. The mares could go any-where, and Smash could not escape their circle by running.

Not that he wantd to. He liked these fine, healthy ani-mals. They were an ogre's type of creature. He remem-bered how one of them had given Tandy a ride to the GoodMagician's castle—which had perhaps been a better desti-nation for her than the one she had sought. The Good Magi-cian had provided Tandy a home for a year, and a solutionto her problem—maybe. Her father Crombie, the soldier atCastle Roogna, might not have been much help. Smashknew the man casually. Crombie was getting old, no longerthe fighter he used to be. He was also a woman hater whomight not have taken his daughter's problem seriously. Butif he had taken it seriously—what could he have done,without leaving his post at Castle Roogna?

And the nightmares—one had helped Tandy travel, butthen had put in for a lien on her soul, causing her awfulgrief. Some help that had been! Maybe these nightmaresneeded to feel the weight of an ogre's displeasure.

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Still he did not know enough to act. What was Tandy'sproblem that the Magician had answered? She had neverquite said. Did it relate to that nightmare lien on her soul?But she had incurred that lien in order to reach the GoodMagician. That hardly seemed profitable. Also, she had notbeen aware of the lien, so she would not have put a Ques-tion about it.

How would traveling with an ogre abate her problem?Had it been the Magician's intent that Smash redeem thatgirl's lost soul with his own? That was possible—but hisunderstanding of the Magician's mode of operations arguedagainst it. Humfrey did not need to fool people about thenature of their payments for their Answers. He should notpretend the service was merely protection duty when, infact, it was soul substitution. So that, too, remained anenigma.

So far, Tandy had recruited fellow travelers with aban-don, and now there were six females in the party. That wasprobably as unlikely a group as existed at the moment inXanth. Normally such maidens fled ogres, and for goodreason—ogres consumed such morsels. Were it not forSmash's commitment not to indulge his natural appetitesbecause of the service he owed the Good Magician—

He shook his head, flinging loose a few angry fleas. No,he could not be sure of his motive there. His father Crunchwas a vegetarian ogre, married to a female of human deri-vation, so Smash had been raised in an atypical ogre home.His folks had been permitted to associate with the peopleof Castle Roogna as long as they honored human customs.Smash himself had not operated under the restriction ofoath or of human taste—but had always known he wouldbe banished from human company if he ever reverted tothe wild state. Anyone who made trouble for King Trentran the risk of being transformed to a toad or a stinkbug,for Trent was the great transformer. It had been easy toconform. So Smash had not actually crunched many hu-man bones, and had carried away no delicious humanmaidens. Perhaps he had been missing something vital—but he remained unwilling to gamble that one good mealwould be more satisfying than the human friendships hehad maintained. So perhaps it was more than the GoodMagician's service that protected Tandy and the others.

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Ogres weren't supposed to need companionship, but thecurse of the Eye Queue showed him that he was, to thatextent, atypical of his kind. Like the Siren, he now knewhe would be lonely alone.

Smash suddenly realized that the ring of mares was onlyhalf the diameter it had been. While he tromped forward,thinking his slew of un-ogrish thoughts, they had been con-stricting their loop. Soon they would be almost within reachof him.

And if they closed on him all the way—what then?Mere horses could hardly hurt an ogre. Each weighedabout as much as he did, but they were only mares, withthe foreparts of sea horses and the rear parts of centaurs.They were basically pretty and gentle. True, their earswere flat back against their skulls, and their manes flaredlike dangerous spikes, their tails flicked like weapons, theirteeth showed white in the moonlight, and their eyes staredslantwise at him as if he were prey instead of monster—buthe knew he could throw any of them far out across theplain, if he chose, when he had his normal ogre strength.Why should they want to come within his reach?

In a moment he had the answer. These were standardnightmares, used to carry bad dreams to their proper dream-ers. They had not been cursed with the Eye Queue; theyhad no super-equine intelligence. They were giving him thestandard treatment, crowding him, trying to scare him—

Smash burst out laughing. Imagine anything scaring anogre!

The mares broke ranks, startled. This was not S. 0. P.The victim was not supposed to laugh. What was wrong?

Smash was sorry. "I didn't mean to mess up your act,mares," he said apologetically. "Circle me again, and I'llpretend to be frightened. I don't want you to get in troublewith your Stallion. In fact, I'd like to meet him myself. Idon't suppose you could take me to him?"

Still the mares milled about. Their formation was in ashambles. They were not here to play a game, but to ter-rify. Since that had failed, they had other business to at-tend to. After all, night had been drawing nigh when heentered the gourd. The group began breaking up. Probablythey would be all over Xanth within the next hour, bearingtheir burdensome dreams.

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"Wait!" Smash cried. "Which of you gave Tandy a.ride?"

One mare hesitated, as if trying to remember. "A yearago," Smash said. "A small human girl, brown hair, throwstantrums."

The black ears perked forward. The mare remembered!

"She sends her thanks," Smash said. "You really helpedher."

The mare nickered, seeming interested. Did these crea-tures really care about the welfare of those on whom theyvisited the bad dreams? Yet his Eye Queue warned himthat it was not safe to judge any creature by his or her job.Some ogres did not crunch bones; some mares might nothate girls.

"Did you mean to destroy her?" he asked. "By taking alien on her soul?"

The mare's head lifted back, nostrils flaring.

"You didn't know?" Smash asked. "When she wanderedinto the gourd, the coffin-creep stole her soul, on the pre-text she owed it for the ride."

The mare snorted. She hadn't known. That made Smashfeel better. Life was a jungle inside the gourd as well as inXanth, with creatures and things grasping whatever theycould get from the unwary. But some were innocent.

"She might visit here again," he continued. "You mightsee her following my string." He pointed to the line he hadlaid out behind him. "If you like, you could give her an-other ride and sort of explain things to her. It would helpher catch up to me quickly. But no more liens!"

The mare snorted and pawed the ground. She was notinterested in giving rides.

"Maybe I can make a deal with you," Smash said. "Idon't want Tandy getting in trouble in here." Not at therisk of her soul, certainly! "Is there anything I can do foryou, outside?"

The mare considered. Then she brightened. She lickedher lips.

"Something to eat?" Smash asked, and the mare nodded."Something nice?" She agreed again. "Rock candy?" Sheneighed nay.

Smash played the guessing game, but could not quitecome up with the correct item. All the other mares had

departed, and this one was fidgeting; he could not hold herlonger. "Well, if I find it, maybe I'll know it," Smash said."Maybe Tandy will know, and bring it with her, if shecomes. You keep in touch, okay?"

The nightmare nodded, then turned and trotted off. Nodoubt she was going to pick up her load of unpleasantdreams for delivery to her clientele of sleepers. Maybesome of them were his friends at the fireoak tree. "Goodluck!" Smash called after her, and she flicked her tail inacknowledgment.

Alone again, he wondered whether he had been foolish.What business did he have with nightmares? What would anightmare want from a person, that the mare could notpick up for herself on her rounds? He was an ogre wholoved violence and horror, and he was here on a personalmission. Yet somehow he felt it was best to get along withany creature he could; perhaps something would come ofit.

This confounded Eye Queue! Not only did it set him totrying un-ogrish things, it rendered him confused about themeaning of these things and full of uncomfortable self-doubt. What a curse it was!

He faced resolutely forward and resumed his tromping.He saw something new on the horizon and proceeded to-ward it. Soon it manifested as a building—no, as a castle—no, larger yet, an entire city, enclosed by a forbidding wall.

As he drew close, he discovered the city was solid gold.Every part of it scintillated in the moonlight, shades ofdeep yellow. But when he drew closer yet, he found that itwas not gold but brass—just as shiny, but not nearly asprecious. Still it was a marvel.

The outer wall was unbroken, riveted metal, gleaming atevery angle. The front gate was the same, so large itdwarfed even Smash's monstrous proportions. This was thesort of city giants would inhabit!

Smash considered that. The little knobs of the hauntedhouse had shocked him; how much worse would this onebe? He was not at all sure he could rip this door from itsmoorings; it was big and strong, and he was now relativelyweak. This was not a situation he liked to admit, but hewas no longer properly stupid about such things.

He pondered, drawing on the full curse of the Eye

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Queue. What he needed was insulation—something to pro-tect him from shock. But there was nothing near; the citywall rose out of sand. He might use his orange jacket—buthe was not wearing it, here in the gourd. All he had wasthe string, and that wasn't suitable.

No help for it. He would have to touch the metal. Ac-tually, there might be a metal floor inside that he wouldhave to walk on; if he were going to get shocked, it wouldhappen with every step. Might as well find out now. Heextended a hamfinger and touched the knob.

There was no shock. He grasped and turned the knob. Itclicked, and the door swung inward. It wasn't lockedl

There was a bright metal hall leading from the gate intothe city. Smash walked down it, half expecting the door toslam shut behind him. It did not. He continued through thehall, his bare, furry soles thumping on the cool metal.

He emerged into an open court with a paving of brass,the moonlight bearing down preternaturally. All was silent.No creatures roamed the city.

"Ho!" Smash bellowed, loud enough to disturb the dead,as seemed appropriate in this realm.

No dead were disturbed. If they heard, they were ignor-ing him. The city seemed to be empty. There was an eeriequality to this that Smash liked. But he wondered who hadmade this city and where those people had gone. It seemedlike far too interesting a place to desert. If ogres built cit-ies, this was the sort of city they would build. But ofcourse no ogre was smart enough to build a single building,let alone a city, certainly not a lovely city of brass.

He tromped through it, his big, flat feet generating amuted booming on the metal street. Brass buildings rose oneither side, their walls making blank brass faces at preciseright angles to the street. He looked up and saw that thetops were squared off, too. There were no windows ordoors. Of course that didn't matter to the average ogre; hecould always bash out any windows when and where hewanted. All was mirror-shiny; he could see his appallingreflection in every surface that faced him. Brass ogrespaced him to either side, and another walked upside down

under the street.

Smash remembered the story his father Crunch had toldof entering a sleeping city and discovering the lovely mush-

Ogre, Ogre                     }35

faced ogress who had become Smash's mother. This city ofbrass was pleasantly reminiscent of that. Was there anogress here for him? That was an exciting prospect, thoughhe hoped she wasn't made of brass.

He traversed the city, but found no entrance to anybuilding. If an ogress was sleeping here, she was lockedaway where he couldn't reach her. Smash banged on awall, making it reverberate; but though the sound boomedpleasantly throughout the city, no one stirred. He punchedharder, trying to break a hole in the wall. It was no good;

he was too weak, the brass was too strong, and he lackedhis protective gauntlets. His fist smarted, so he stuck it inhis mouth.

Smash was beginning to be bothered. Before there hadbeen halfway interesting things like walking skeletons, elec-trified doors, and nightmares. Now there was just brass.What could he accomplish here?

He invoked the curse of the Eye Queue yet again anddid some solid thinking. So far, each little adventure withinthe gourd had been a kind of riddle; he had to overcomesome barrier or beat some sort of threat before he couldcontinue to the next event. So it was probably not enoughjust to enter this empty city and depart; that might notcount. He had to solve the riddle, thus narrowing the op-tions, reducing the remaining places for the Night Stallionto hide. Straight physical action did not seem to be the re-quirement here. What, then, was?

There must be a nonphysical way to deal with this im-passive place, perhaps to bring it to life so it could be con-quered. Maybe a magical spell. But Smash did not knowany spells, and somehow this city seemed too alien to bemagical. What else, then?

He paced the streets, still unreeling his string, carefulnever to cross his own path. And, in a little private squaredirectly under the moon, he discovered a pedestal. Signifi-cant things were usually mounted on pedestals directly un-der the moon, he remembered. So he marched up to it andlooked.

He was disappointed. There was only a brass buttonthere. Nothing to do except to press it: There might beserious consequences, but no self-respecting ogre worriedabout that sort of thing. He turned his big hamthumb down

136 Ogre, Ogre

and mashed the button. With luck, all hell would breakloose.

As it happened, luck was with him. Most of hell brokeloose.

There was a pleasantly deafening klaxon alarm noisethat filled all this limited universe with vibrations. Thenthe metal buildings began shifting about, moving along thefloor of the city, squeezing the streets and the court. In amoment there would be no place remaining for him tostand.

This was more like it! At first Smash planned to bracehimself and halt the encroaching buildings by brute ogrestrength. But he lacked his full power now, and anyway, itwas better to use his brain. Perhaps the Eye Queue wasgradually subverting him, causing him to endorse its na-ture; already it seemed like less of a curse, and he knew—-because, ironically, of the intelligence it provided him—that this was a significant signal of corruption. Mentalpower tended to corrupt, and absolute intelligence tendedto corrupt absolutely, until the victim eschewed violenceentirely in favor of smart solutions to stupid problems.Smash hoped he could fight off the curse before it everruined him to that extent! If he stopped being stupid, bru-tal, and violent, he would no longer be a true ogre.

Nevertheless, the expedience of the moment forced himto utilize his mind. He knew that a block that moved oneway had to leave a space behind it, unless it happened tobe expanding rapidly. He zipped between buildings, emerg-ing from the narrowing aisle just before the two clangedtogether. Sure enough, there was a new space where abuilding had stood. It was perfectly smooth brass except fora cubic hole where the center of the building had been.Probably that was the anchoring place, like part of a lockmechanism; a heavy bolt would drop down from the build-ing to wedge in that hole and keep the building from slid-ing about when it wasn't supposed to. When he had pressedthe brass button, the lock bolts had lifted, freeing the build-ings. Buildings, like clouds, bashed about all over the placewhen given the freedom to do so. The klaxon had soundedto warn all crushable parties that motion was commencing,so they could either get out of the way or pick their favor-ite saiiishin^-snot. It all made a sort of violent sense, his

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Eye Queue informed him. He liked this city better thanever.

Now the building blocks were bouncing back, convergingon him. Smash moved again, avoiding what could be acrushing experience. He found himself in a new openspace, with another anchorage slot.

But the blocks were moving more quickly now, as if get-ting warmed up. Because they were big, he needed a cer-tain amount of time to run between them. If they speededup much more, he would not have time to clear before theyclanged. That could be awkward.

"Well, brain, what do you say to this?" he asked chal-lengingly. "Can you outsmart two buildings that plan tocatch me and squish me flat?"

His vine-corrupted brain, thus challenged, rose to the oc-casion. "Get in the pit," it told him.

Smash thought this was crazy. But already the brass wasmoving, sounding off with its tune of compression, and hehad to act. He leaped into the pit as the blank metal face ofthe building charged him.

Too late, it occurred to him, or to his Eye Queue—itbecame difficult at times to distinguish ogre-mind fromvine-mind—that he could be crushed when the boltdropped down to anchor the building. But that should hap-pen only when the building was finished traveling andwanted to settle down for a rest. He would try to be out bythen. If he failed—well, squishing was an ogrish kind ofdemise.

It was dark there as the metal underbody of the buildingslid across. He felt slightly claustrophobic—another weak-ness of intelligence, since a true ogre never worried aboutdanger or consequence. What would happen if the buildingdid not move off?

Then light flashed down from above. Smash blinked anddiscovered that the center of the building was hollow, glow-ing from the inner walls. He had found his way inside!

He scrambled up and stood on the floor, still holding hisball of string. The building was still moving, but there wasno way it could crush him now. The building floor coveredeverything except the square where the anchorage holewould be when it lay at anchor, so he could simply ridealong with it.

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He looked about—and spied an army of brass men andwomen, each individual fully formed, complete with brassfacial features, hair, and clothing—the men fully clothed,the women less so. But they were statues, erected on plat-forms that, like the floor, moved with the building. Noth-ing here was of interest to an ogre. He knew brass wasn'tgood to eat.

Then he spied another brass button.

Well, why not? Maybe this one would make the buildingstop moving. Of course, if this one stopped and the otherbuildings did not, there would be a horrendous crash.Smash jammed his thumb down on the button.

Instantly the brass statues animated. The metal peoplespied the ogre and converged on him. And Smash—

Found himself leaning against the fireoak tree. Tandystood before him, holding the gourd. She had broken hisline of vision to the peephole. "Are you all right, Smash?"she asked with her cute concern.

"Certainly!" he grumped. "Why did you interrupt me? Itwas just getting interesting." .

"The lunatic fringe is tearing," she said worriedly. "Thehuman villagers are in the area and will soon discover the

tree."

"Well, bring me back when they do," Smash said. "I

have metal men to fight inside."

"Metal men?"

"And women. Solid brass."

"Oh," she said, uncomprehending. "Remember, you're inthere to fight for your soul. I worry about you. Smash."

He guffawed. "You worry about me! You're human; I'm

an ogre!"

"Yes," she agreed, but her face remained drawn. "Iknow what it's like in there. You put your soul in peril forme. I can't forget that. Smash."

"You don't like it in there," he pointed out. "I do. And Iagreed to protect you. This is merely another aspect." Hetook the gourd back and applied his eye to the peephole.

The brass people were converging, exactly where theyhad been when he left. They seemed not even to be awareof his brief absence. The building was moving, too—but ithad not moved in the interim. His Eye Queue-cursed brainfound all this interesting, but Smash had no time for that

nonsense at the moment. The brassies were almost on him.

The first one struck at him. The man was only halfSmash's height, but the metal made him solid. Smash hauledhim up by the brassard and threw him aside. Smash stilllacked the strength to do real damage, but at least he couldfight weakly. In his strength he would have hurled thebrass man right through the brass wall of the building.

A female grabbed at him. Smash hooked a forefingerinto her brassiere and hauled her up to his eye level. "Whyare you attacking me?" he asked, curious rather than an-gry.

"We're only following our program," she said, kicking athim with a pretty brass foot.

"But if you fight me, I shall have to fight you," hepointed out. "And I happen to be a monster."

"Don't try to reason with me, you big hunk of flesh; I'mtoo brassy for that." She swung at him with a metal fist.But he was holding her at his arm's length, so she couldnot reach him.

Something was knocking at his knee. Smash lookeddown. A man was striking at him with his brass knuckles.Smash dropped the brass girl on the brass man's brass hat,and the two crashed to the floor in a shower of brass tacks.They cried out with the sound of brass winds.

Now a half-dozen brassies were grabbing at Smash's legs,and he lacked the strength to throw them all off at once.So he reached down to pluck them off one at a time—

He was under the tree again. He saw the problem imme-diately. Half a dozen brassies—no, these were men andwomen of the human village—were converging on the tree,bearing wicked-looking axes. The hamadryad was scream-ing.

Smash had no patience with this. He stood up, toweringover the villagers, ogre-fashion. He roared a fine ogre roar.

The villagers turned and fled. They didn't know Smashwas short of strength at the moment. Otherwise they couldhave attacked him and perhaps put him in difficulty, inthe same way the brassies were doing in the gourd. He hadreplaced the illusion of the lunatic fringe with the illusionof his own formidability.

The hamadryad dropped from her tree, her hair glowinglike fire, catching him about the neck. She was now a vi-

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brant, healthy creature. "You great big wonderful brute ofa creature!" she exclaimed, kissing his furry ear. Smashwas oddly moved; as the centaur had noted, ogres wereseldom embraced or kissed by nymphs.

He handed the hamadryad back into her tree, then set-tled down for another session in the gourd. None of themhad anywhere to go until the King got the news and actedto protect the tree permanently, and he wanted to wrap upthis gourd business.

"Wake me at need," he said, noting that the shimmer ofthe lunatic fringe was now almost gone. If trees had ogres toprotect them instead of cute but helpless hamadryads, veryfew trees would be destroyed. Of course, ogres themselveswere prime destroyers of trees, using them to make tooth-picks and such, so he was in no position to criticize. Heapplied his left eye to the peephole this time, giving hisright orb a rest.

He stood in an alley between buildings. What was this?The sequence was supposed to pick up exactly where it hadleft off. What had gone wrong?

The two buildings slid toward him, forcing him to scootout of the way. Smash emerged into a new space—and sawhis line of string. He was about to cross his own path! Buthe couldn't retreat; the buildings were clanging behind him.

Still, his cursed Eye Queue wouldn't let him leave wellenough alone. It wanted to know why the gourd scene hadslipped a notch. Was the gourd getting old, beginning torot, breaking down its system? He didn't want to betrapped in a rotting gourd.

The buildings separated, starting to converge on a newspot. The alley reopened, the string he had just set out run-ning down its length—and stopping.

Smash ran to the end of it. The string had been severedcleanly; it ended at the point he had re-entered the vision.

But as the buildings separated. Smash saw another cutend of string. That must be where he had been before, justa little distance away. He had jumped no farther than hecould have bounded by foot. But he hadn't jumped physi-cally; he had left the scene, then returned to it slightly dis-placed. Why?

The buildings reversed course and closed on him again.They certainly wasted no time pondering questions! Smash

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ran back, his mind working. And suddenly it came tohim—he had switched eyes! His left eye was a little apartfrom his right eye—and though that distance was small inthe real world of Xanth, it was larger in the tiny world ofthe gourd. So there had been a shift, and a break in hisstring.

Well, that had freed him of the brass folk. But Smashcouldn't accept that. He didn't want to escape, he wantedto win, to conquer this setting and go on to the next, know-ing he had narrowed the Night Stallion's options. Hewanted to do his job right, leaving no possible loophole forthe loss of his soul. So he had to go back to the place hehad left off, and resume there.

He followed his prior line, dragging his new line behindhim. He found the square pit as the building moved off it,and he got down into it. The building swung back, and theinterior light came on. Smash climbed out and ran to theend of his string.

The brass folk saw him and came charging in. Smashtied the two ends of string together, making his line com-plete, then stood as half a dozen people grabbed him. Thiswas where he had left off; now it was all right.

He resumed plucking individual brass folk off. One ofthem was the girl in the brassiere. "You again?" he in-quired, holding her up by one finger, as he had done be-fore. It was really the best place, since she was flailing allher limbs wildly. "Do I have to drop you again?"

"Don't you dare drop me again!" she flashed, her brasssurface glinting with ire. She took an angry breath—whichalmost dislodged her, for she had a full brassiere and hispurchase on it was slight. "I have a dent and threescratches from the last time, you monster!" She pointed ather arms. "There's a scratch. There's another. But I won'tshow you the dent."

"Well, you did kick at me," Smash said reasonably, won-dering where the dent was.

"I told you! We have to—"

Then he was back in Xanth again. Smash saw the prob-lem immediately; a cockatrice was approaching the tree.The baby basilisk had evidently been recently hatched andwas wandering aimlessly—but remained deadly dangerous.

"Put me down, you lunk!"

142 Ogre, Ogre

Startled, Smash looked at the source of the voice. Hewas still holding the brass girl, dangling by her brassierehooked on his finger. She had been brought out of thegourd with him!

Hastily Smash set her down, carefully so she would notdent. He had a more immediate matter to attend to. Howcould he get rid of the cockatrice?

"Oh, look," the brass girl said. "What a cute chickl" Shestepped over to the terrible infant, reaching down.

"Don't touch it!" the Siren cried. "Don't even look at it!"

Too late. The brass girl picked up the baby monster."Oh, aren't you a sweet one," she cooed, turning it in herhand so she could look it in the snoot.

"No!" several voices cried.

Again they were too late. The brass girl stared deeplyinto the monster's baleful eyes. "Oh, I wish I could keepyou for my very own pet, along with my other pets," shesaid, touching her pert nose to its hideous schnozzle. "Idon't have anything like you in my collection."

The chick hissed and bit—but its tiny teeth were ineffec-tive against the brass. "Oh, how nice," the girl said. "Youlike me, don't you!"

Apparently the little monster's powers were harmlessagainst the metal girl. She was already harder than stone.

"Uh, miss—" the Siren said.

"I'm called Biyght," the brass girl said. "Of BuildingFour, in the City of Brass. Who are you?"

"I'm called the Siren," the Siren said. "Biythe, we wouldappreciate it if—"

"Biyght," the girl corrected her brassily.

"Sorry. I misheard. Biyght. If you would—"

"But I think I like Biythe better. This place is so muchsofter than I'm used to. So you can use that, Sim."

"Siren. Two syllables."

"That's all right. I prefer one syllable, Sim."

"You can change names at will?" John asked incredu-lously.

"Of course. All brassies can. Can't you?"

"No," the fairy said enviously.

"Biythe, that animal—" the Siren broke in. "It's deadlyto us. So if you would—"

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Smash had been looking around to see if there were anyother dangers. At this point his eye fell on the gourd—andeven from a distance his consciousness was drawn into thepeephole, and he was back among the brassies. This timehe stood within the building, but apart from the crowd, andhis string had been interrupted again. He was using hisright eye.

The brass folk spied him and charged. This was gettingpointless. "Wait!" he bellowed.

They paused, taken aback. "Why?" one inquired."Because I accidentally took one of your number out ofthe gourd, and if anything happens to me, she'll be foreverstranded there."

They were appalled, almost galvanized. "That would bea fate worse than death!" one cried. "That would be—" Hepaused, balking at the awful concept.

"That would be—life," another brass man whispered.There was a sudden hush of dread.

"Yes," Smash agreed cruelly. "So I have to fetch herback. And I will. But you'll have to help me."

"Anything," the man said, his brass face tarnishing."Tell me how to get out of here, on my own.""That's easy. Take the ship.""The ship? But there's no water here!"Several brassies smiled metallically. "It's not that kind ofship. It's the Luna-fringe-shuttle. You catch it at the Lunatriptych building."

"Show me to it," Smash said.

They showed him to a brass door that opened to the out-side. "You can't miss it," they assured him. "It's the biggestblock in the city."

Smash thanked them and stepped out. The buildingswere still moving, but now he had the experience andconfidence to travel by their retreating sides, avoiding colli-sions. He glanced back at the building he had left and sawthe number 4 inscribed on the side, but there was no signof the door he had exited by. Apparently it was a one-waydoor that didn't exist from this side.

Soon he spied a building twice the size of the others.That had to be the one. He ducked into an anchor hole asthe building approached, and m a moment was inside.

144 Ogre, Ogre

There was the fringe-shuttle, like a monstrous arrowheadstanding on its tail. It had a porthole in the side big enoughto admit him, so he climbed in.

He found himself in a tight cockpit that the cock seemedto have vacated. There was only one place to sit comfort-ably, a kind of padded chair before a panel full of dinguses.So he sat there, knowing he could bash the dinguses out ofthe way if they bothered him. There was another brass but-ton on the panel, and he punched it with his thumb.

The porthole clanged closed. A wheel spun itself about.Air hissed. Straps rose up from the chair and wrappedthemselves around his body. A magic mirror lit up beforehis face. An alarm klaxon sounded. The ship shuddered,then launched upward like a shot from a catapult, punchingthrough the roof.

In moments the mirror showed clouds falling awayahead. Then the moon came into view, growing larger andbrighter each moment. It was now a half-circle. Ofcourse—that was why the lunatic fringe no longershrouded the fireoak tree—not enough moon left to sustainit. But the half that remained seemed solid enough, exceptfor the round holes in it. Of course, cheese did have holes;

that was its nature.

Now it occurred to him that the brassies might have mis-construed his request. They had shown him the way out ofthe City of Brass—but not out of the gourd. Well, nothingto do now but carry this through. Maybe the ship could gethim back to the fireoak tree.

He didn't really want to go to the moon, though the viewof all that fresh cheese made him hungry. After all, it hadbeen at least an hour since he had eaten that bushel offruit. So he checked the panel before him and found a cou-ple of projecting brass sticks. He grabbed them, wigglingthem about.

The moon veered out of the mirror-picture, and Smashwas flung about in his chair as if tossed by a storm. For-tunately, the straps held him pretty much in place. He letgo of the sticks—and after a moment the moon swung backinto view. Evidently he had messed up the ship's program.His Eye Queue curse caused him to ponder this, and heconcluded that the sticks controlled the ship. When theywere not in use, the ship sailed where it wanted, which was

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evidently a hole in the cheese of the moon. Maybe thisLuna shuttle was the mechanism by which the moon'scheese was brought to Xanth, though he wasn't sure whatuse metal people would have for cheese.

Smash took hold of the sticks again and wiggled morecautiously. Ogres were clumsy only when it suited them tobe so; they could perform delicate tasks when no one waswatching. The moon danced about but did not leave thescreen. He experimented some more, and soon was able tosteer the ship where he wanted and to make it go at anyspeed he wanted.

Fine—now he would take it back to Xanth and land be-side the fireoak tree. Then he could turn it over to BiytheBrassie so she could fly back to her city and building.

Then blips appeared on the screen. They were shapedlike little curse-burrs and were hurtling toward him. Whatdid they want?

Then flashes of light came near him. The ship shook.The screen flared red for a moment, as if it had beenknocked half silly. Smash understood this sort of thing. Itwas like getting knocked in the snoot by a fist and havingstars and planets fly out from one's head. The entire nightsky was filled with the stars flung out from people's headsin the course of prior fights, but Smash didn't care to havehis own lights punched out. The thing to do was to hit backand destroy the enemy.

He checked the panel again, enjoying the prospect of anew type of violence. There was a big button he hadn'tnoticed before. Naturally he thumbed it.

A flash of light shot toward the blips, evidently from hisown ship. It was throwing its sort of rocks when he told itto. Very well, in this strange gourd world, he could acceptthe notion of a fist made of light. But it wasn't aimed well,and missed the blips. It lanced on to blast a chunk ofcheese out of the moon. Grated cheese puffed out intospace in a diffuse cloud, where some of the blips wentafter it; no doubt they were hungry, too.

Smash pressed the button again, sending out another fistof light. This one missed both blips and moon. But he wasgetting the feel of it; he had to have his target in the verycenter of the mirror, where there was a faint intersection oflines like the center of a spider web. Funny place for a

146 Ogre, Ogre

spider to work; maybe it had been trying to catch straystars or blips or bits of blasted cheese.

To center the target, he had to work the two sticks in acoordinated fashion. He did so, after glancing nervouslyabout to make quite sure no one was near to see him beingso well coordinated. Of course, it took more than strengthto balance his whole body on a single hamfinger or tosmash a rock into a particular grade of gravel with oneblow, but that was an ogre secret. It was fashionable toappear clumsy.

When he had a blip centered, he pushed the button withhis big left toe so he wouldn't have to stop maneuvering.This time his aim was good; the beam speared out andstruck the blip, which exploded with lovely violence andpretty colors.

This was fun! Not as much fun as physical bashingwould be, but excellent vicarious mayhem. Ogres could ap-preciate beauty, too—the splendor of bursting bodies or ofblips flying apart, forming intricate and changing patternsin the sky. He oriented on another blip, but it took evasiveaction.

Meanwhile, all the other blips were nearer, and theirlight-fists were striking closer. He had to dodge them, andthat interfered with his own strikes.

Well, he was not an ogre for nothing! He licked hischops, worked his sticks, looped about, oriented, fired,dodged, and oriented again. Two more blips exploded beau-tifully.

Then the fight intensified. But Smash loved combat ofany kind and was good at it; he didn't have to use physicalfists. He almost liked this form of fighting better, becauseit was less familiar and therefore more of a challenge. Heknocked out blip after blip, and after a while the remainingblips turned tail and fled past the moon. He had won thebattle of the Luna fringe!

He was tempted to pursue the blips, so as to continue thepleasure of the fight a little longer, but realized that if hewiped them all out at this time, they would not have achance to regenerate and return for future battles. Betterto let them go, for the sake of more fun on future days.Also, he had other business.

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He turned the ship about and headed for Xanth_whichresembled a small disk from this vantage, like a greenishpie. That made him hungry again. Well, he would be care-ful not to miss it. He accelerated, zooming happily onward.

Chapter 8. Dragon's Ear

He was back in Xanth. "Smash, something else iscoming!" Tandy cried.

"That's all right," he said. "I've won another battle. Ifeel stronger." And he did; he knew he was winning thegourd campaign, getting closer to the Night Stallion, andrecovering physical strength in the process. It had been inlarge part his former hopelessness that had weakened him.He had believed his soul was doomed, until learning thathe could fight for it in another gourd.

Biythe Brassie was still here. Now he wondered—howhad she been carried out with him, when he had not been

physically in the gourd?

His Eye Queue curse provided him with the answer to aquestion any normal ogre would not even have thought of.Biythe was here in spirit, just as he had been inside thegourd in spirit. It was very hard to tell such spirit fromreality, but each person knew his own reality and was notfooled. No doubt Biythe Spirit's real body remained in thegourd, in a trance-state; since the brassies spent much oftheir time as statues anyway, waiting for someone to comepush their button, no one had noticed the difference. Orrather, they had noticed, and been alarmed because she re-mained a statue while they were animate. So they knewthat her vital element, her soul, was elsewhere. Yes, it allmade sense. Everything in Xanth made sense, once a per-son penetrated the seeming nonsense that masked it. Differ-ent things made different sorts of sense for different peo-ple.

He would have to take the brass girl back. His curse not

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only forced intelligence on him, it forced un-ogrish moralawareness. At the moment he wasn't even certain that suchawareness was a bad thing, inconvenient as it might bewhen there was mayhem to be wreaked.

But the tree-chopping attack party was coming again.Smash oriented on the group as it galloped just beyondview. The villagers must have gotten reinforcements. Theindividuals were larger than basilisks—evidently Biythehad deposited the chickatrice safely elsewhere—but smallerthan sphinxes. They were hoofed. In fact—

"That's my brother!" Chem exclaimed. "Now I recog-nize his hoofbeat. But there's something with him—not acentaur."

Smash braced himself for what could be a complicatedsituation. If some monster were riding herd on his friendChet . . .

They hove into view. "Holey cow!" the Siren breathed.That was exactly what it was—a cow as full of holes asany big cheese. She had holes in her body every which waythrough which daylight showed. She was worse than themoon! A big one was in her head, about where her brainshould have been; evidently that didn't impede her much.Even her horns and tail had little holes. Her legs were soholey they seemed ready to collapse, yet she functionedperfectly well.

In fact, she carried two human riders who braced theirhands and feet in her holes. She was a big cow, and hergait was bumpy, so these handholds and footholds were es-sential.

Now Smash recognized the riders. "Dor! Irene!" he criedhappily.

"Prince Dor?" the Siren asked. "And his fiancee?""Yes, they are taking forever about working up to mar-riage," Chem murmured with a certain equine snideness."It's been four years now . . ."

"And Grundy the Golem!" Smash added, spying the tinyfigure perched on the back of the centaur. "All myfriends!"

"We're your friends, too," Tandy said, nettled.The party drew abreast of the fireoak tree. "What'sthis?" the golem cried. "Snow White and the SevenDwarves?"

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Smash stood among the damsels, towering over them,not comprehending the reference. But the Eye Queue cursesoon clarified it, obnoxiously. Some of the Mundane set-tlers in Xanth had a story by that title, and, compared withSmash the Ogre, the seven females were dwarvishly short,as was even Chem the Centaur.

"It seems you have a way with women. Smash," PrinceDor said, dismounting from the holey cow and coming togreet him. "What's your secret?"

"I only agreed not to eat them," Smash said.

"To think how much simpler my life would have been ifI had known that," Dor said. "I thought girls had to be

courted."

"You never courted me!" Princess Irene exclaimed. Shewas a striking beauty by human standards, nineteen yearsold. The other girls all took jealously deep breaths, watch-ing her. "I courted you! But you never would marry me."

"You never would set the date!" Dor retorted.

Her mouth opened in a pretty 0 of indignation. "Younever set the date! I've been trying to—"

"They've been fighting about the date since before therewas anything to date," Grundy remarked. "He doesn't evenknow what color her panties are."

"I don't think she knows herself," Dor retorted.

"I do, too!" Irene flashed. "They're—" She paused, thenhiked up her skirt to look. "Green."

"It's only a pretext to show oS her legs," Smash ex-plained to the others.

"So I see," Tandy said enviously.

"And her panties," John said. She, like Fireoak, the Si-ren, and Chem, didn't wear panties, so couldn't show themoff. Biythe's panties were copper-bottoms.

"You creatures are getting too smart," Irene complained.Then she did a double take, turning to Smash. "What hap-pened to your rhymes?"

"I got cursed by the vine," the ogre explained. "It de-prived me of both rhyme and stupidity in one swell foop."

"In a foop? Oh, you poor thing," she said sympatheti-cally.

"Now that incorrigible ogre charm is working on Irene,

too," Prince Dor muttered.

"Of course it is, idiot," she retorted. "All women have a

secret passion for ogres." She turned to Smash. "Now youhad better introduce us all."

Smash did so with dispatch. "Tandy, Siren, John, Fire-oak, Chem, Goldy, and Biythe—these are Dor, Irene,Grundy, and Chet, and vice versa."

"Moooo!" lowed the holey cow, each 0 with a big roundhole in it.

"And the Holey Cow," Smash amended. Satisfied, thebovine swished her tattered tail and began to graze. Thecropped grass fell out the holes in her neck as fast as sheswallowed it, but she didn't seem to mind.

"I delivered your message," Chet said. "King Trent hasdeclared this tree a protected species, and all the othertrees in sight of it, and sent Prince Dor to inform the vil-lage. There will be no more trouble about that."

"Oh, wonderful!" the hamadryad cried. "I'm so happy!"She danced a little jig in air, hanging by one hand from abranch. The tree's leaves seemed to catch fire, harmlessly.Both nymph and tree were fully recovered from the indis-position of their recent separation. "I could just kiss theKing!"

"Kiss me instead," Dor said. "I'm the messenger."

"Oh, no, you don't!" Irene flashed, taking him firmly bythe ear.

"Kiss me instead of Dor," Chet offered. "There's noshrew guarding me."

The hamadryad dropped from her branch, flung herarms about the centaur, and kissed him. "Maybe I havebeen missing something," she commented. "But I don'tthink there are any males of my species."

"You could take up with one of the woodland fauns,"Princess Irene suggested. "You do have pretty hair." Thehamadryad's hair, under its red fringe, was green—as wasIrene's hair.

"I'll consider it," Fireoak agreed.

"How did you gather such a bevy?" Prince Dor askedSmash. "They certainly seem affectionate, unlike some Ihave known." He moved with agility to avoid Irene's swiftkick.

"I just picked them up along the way," the ogre said."Each has her mission. John needs her correct name, theSiren needs a better lake—"

152 Ogre, Ogre

"They all need men," the golem put in.

"I need to go home," Biythe said.

"Oh. I'll take you there now." Smash reached for thegourd.

"She's from a hypnogourd?" Princess Irene asked. "Thisshould be interesting. I always wondered what was insideone of those things."

Smash hooked his finger into Biythe's brassiere andlifted her high.

"Well, that's one way to pick up a girl," Dor remarked."I'll have to try that sometime."

"Won't work," Irene said. "I don't wear a—"

"Not even a green one?" Tandy asked, brightening.

Smash looked into the gourd's peephole.

The two of them were in the brass spaceship, descendingrapidly toward Xanth.

"Oh!" Biythe exclaimed, terrified. She flung her brassarms about Smash. "I'll fall! I'll fall! Save me, ogre!"

"But I have to bring it down to return to your building,"Smash said. He was having difficulty because there washardly room for two. He grabbed for a control stick, jerkedit around—and the brass girl jumped.

"What are you doing with my knee?" she cried.

Oh. Smash saw now that he had hold of the wrong thing.But it was almost impossible to operate the controls withher limbs in the way. The ship veered crazily, which setBiythe off again. Her nerves certainly were not made ofsteel! The more she kicked and screamed, the worse theship spun, and the more frightened she became. They werenow plunging precipitously toward ground.

Then they were back under the fireoak tree. "Wethought you had enough time to drop her off," Tandy said.Then she paused, frowning.

Biythe was wrapped around Smash, her metal arms hug-ging his neck desperately, her legs clasping his side. Hehad firm hold of one of her knees.

"I think we interrupted something," Princess Irene re-marked sardonically.

Biythe's complexion converted from brass to copper.Smash suspected his own was doing much the same, as hisEye Queue now made him conscious of un-ogrish propri-

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eties. The two disengaged, and Smash set the brass girldown on the ground, where she sat and sobbed brass tears."We were crashing," Smash explained lamely.

"Oh—Mundane slang," Chet said. "But I think shewasn't quite ready for it."

"It's really no business of ours what you call it," Grundysaid, smirking.

"Oh, don't be cruel!" the Siren said. "This poor girl isterrified, and we know Smash wouldn't hurt her. Some-thing is wrong in the gourd."

In due course they worked it out. Smash would have toreturn to the brass building first, then come back forBiythe, who, it seemed, was afraid of interplanetaryheights.

But now dawn was coming, and other business waspressing. They had to inform the local village of the pro-tected status of the tree and its environs, and then Chetand his party had to return to Castle Roogna. In addition,Biythe was no longer so eager to jump into the gourd, withor without the ogre. If she went alone, she might find her-self crashing in the ship, and have no way to get back out-side, since she was not an outside creature. It would bebetter to send her back later, once things were more settled.

"Oh," Chet said. "Almost forgot. I gave Tandy's messageto Crombie, and he made a pointing—that's his talent, youknow, pointing out things—and he concluded that if youwent north, you'd face great danger and lose three thingsof value. But when he did a pointing back where you camefrom, there was something else you'd lose that was evenmore important. He couldn't figure out what any of thethings were, but thought you'd better be advised. He saysyou're a spunky girl who will probably win through in themanner of your kind."

Tandy laughed. "That's my father, all right! He hateswomen, and he knows I'm growing up, so he's starting tohate me, too. But I'm glad to have his advice."

"What's back at your home that's worse than the jungleof Xanth?" Chet asked.     '

Tandy remembered the demon Fiant. "Never mind. I'mnot going home until that danger is nullified. I'll just takemy chances with the three things I'll lose in the jungle."

154 Ogre, Ogre

But she found the message disquieting. She had no thingsto lose—but she knew her father never made a mistakewhen he pointed something out.

Princess Irene's talent was growing plants. She grew afine, big, mixed-fruit bush, and they dined on red, green,blue, yellow, and black berries, all juicy and luscious.Smash had always liked Irene, because no one remainedhungry in her presence, and she did have excellent legs.Not that an ogre should notice, of course—yet it was hardnot to imagine how delicious such firmly fleshed limbswould taste.

"Uh, before you go," the Siren said. "I understand youhave a way with the inanimate, Prince Dor."

"Whatever gave you that idiotic notion, fish-tail?" a rockbeside the Prince inquired. The Siren was sitting next to abucket of water and was soaking her tail; she got uncom-fortable when she spent too long out of the water.

"I picked up something, and I think it may be magical,"the Siren continued. "But I'm not sure in what way, anddon't want to experiment foolishly." She brought out a be-draggled, half-metallic thing.

"What are you?" Prince Dor asked the thing.

"I am the Gap Dragon's Ear," it answered. "The con-founded ogre bashed me off the dragon's head."

Smash was surprised. "How did you get that?"

"I picked it up during the fight, then forgot about it,What with the pining tree and all," the Siren explained.

"The Gap Chasm does have a forgetful property," Irenesaid. "I understand that's Dor's fault."

"But the Gap's been forgotten for centuries, hasn't it?"the Siren asked. "We can only remember it now becausewe're st'ill quite close to it; we'll forget it again when we goon north. How can Dor possibly be responsible?"

"Oh, he gets around," Irene said, giving the Prince adark look. "He's been places none of us would believe. Heeven used to live with Millie, the sex-appeal maid."

"She was my governess when I was a child!" Dor pro-tested. "Besides, she was eight hundred years old."

"And looked seventeen," Irene retorted. "You weren'tconscious of that?"

Dor concentrated on the Ear. "What is your property?"he asked it.

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"I hear anything relevant," it said. "I twitch when mypossessor should listen. That's how the Gap Dragon alwaysknew when prey was in the Gap. I heard it for him."

"Well, the Gap Dragon still has one ear to hear with,"Dor said. "How can we hear what you hear?"

"Just listen to me, dummyi" the Ear said. "What else doyou do with an ear?"

"That's a mighty impolite item," Tandy said, bothered.

"Can we test it?" the Siren asked. "Before you go,Prince Dor?"

"Oh, let me try," John said. She seemed much recov-ered, though her wings remained nubs. It would be longbefore she flew again, if ever.

The Siren gave her the Ear. John held it to her own tinyear. She listened intently, her face showing puzzlement."It's a rushing sound, maybe like water flowing," she re-ported. "Is that relevant?"

"Well, I didn't twitch," the Ear grumped. "You takeyour chances when there's nothing much on."

"How is that rushing noise relevant?" Dor asked the Ear.

"Obvious, stupid," the Ear said. "That's the sound of thewaterfall where the fairy she wants is staying."

"It is?" John demanded, so excited that her wing-stubsfluttered. "The one with my name?"

"That's what I said, twerp."

"Do you tolerate insults from the inanimate?" the Sirenasked the Prince.

"Only stupid things insult others gratuitously," Dor said.

"That's for sure, you moron," the rock agreed. Then itreconsidered. "Hey—"

The Siren laughed. "Now I understand. You have toconsider the source."

Prince Dor smiled. "You resemble your sister. Of course,I've never seen her face."

"The rest will do," the Siren said, flattered. "Do onlysmart people compliment others gratuitously?"

"Perhaps," he agreed. "Or observant ones. But I do ob-tain much useful information from the inanimate. Now wemust go talk with the villagers and head back to CastleRoogna. It has been nice to meet all of you, and I hope youall find what you wish."

There was a chorus of thank-yous. Prince Dor and

156 Ogre, Ogre

Princess Irene remounted the holey cow. Chet kissed Chemgood-bye, and Grundy the Golem scrambled onto his back."Get moving, horsetail!" Then Grundy paused thought-fully, exactly as the rock had. They moved off toward thevillage.

"Dor will make a fine King one day," the Siren re-marked.

"But Irene will run the show," Chem said. "I know themwell."

"No harm in that," the Siren said, and the other girlslaughed, agreeing.

"We'd better get started north," Tandy said. "Now thatthe tree is safe."

"How can I ever thank you?" Fireoak exclaimed. "Yousaved my life, my tree's life. Same thing."

"Some things are simply worth doing for themselves,dear," the Siren said. "I learned that when Chem's fatherChester destroyed my dulcimer, so I couldn't lure men anymore." Her sunshine hair clouded momentarily.

"My father did that?" Chem asked, surprised. "I didn'tknow!"

"It stopped me from being a menace to navigation," theSiren said. "I was doing a lot of damage, uncaringly. It wasa necessary thing. Likewise it was necessary to save thefireoak tree."

"Yes," Chem agreed. But she seemed shaken.

They bade farewell to the hamadryad, promising to visither any time any of them happened to be in the vicinity,and started north.

At first they passed through normal Xanth country-side—carnivorous grasses, teakettle serpents whose hisseswere worse than their fires, poisonous springs, tangle trees,sundry spells, and the usual ravines, mountains, river rap-ids, slow and quicksand bogs, illusions, and a few normallyfoul-mouthed harpies, but nothing serious occurred. Theyforaged along the way for edible things and took turns lis-tening to the Gap Dragon's Ear, though it was not twitch-ing; this became more helpful as they gradually learned tointerpret it. The Siren heard a kind of splashing, as ofsomeone swimming. She took this to be the merman shewanted to find. Goldy heard the sounds of a goblin settle-

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ment in operation: where she was going. Smash heard therhyming grunts of ogres. Biythe, persuaded to try it,jumped as the Ear twitched in her hands, and she actuallyheard herself mentioned. The brassies missed her andfeared the ogre had betrayed their trust. "I must go back!"she cried. "As soon as I recover enough of my courage. Mynerves aren't iron, you know."

But when Chem tried it, her face sobered. "It must beout of order. All I get is a faint buzzing."

The Siren took back the Ear. "That's funny. I get thebuzzing, too, now."

They passed the Ear around. Everyone heard the samething, and it twitched for none of them.

Smash applied his Eye Queue curse to the Ear. "Either itis malfunctioning," he decided, "or the buzzing is somehowrelevant to all of us, without being specific to any of us. Noone is talking about us, no one is lurking for us, so it is justsomething we should know about."

"Let's assume it's not malfunctioning," Tandy said. "Thelast thing we need is a glitching Ear, especially when myfather says there is danger ahead. So we'd better watch outfor something that buzzes. It seems to be getting louder aswe go."

Indeed it was. Now there were variations in it, louderbuzzes in front of background ones, an elevating and lower-ing of pitch. It was, in fact, a whole collection of buzzes,sounding three-dimensional, as some pitches became louderand clearer, while others faded back and some faded outentirely. What did it mean?

They came across a wall made from paper. It traveledroughly east/west and reached up to the top level of thetrees, too high for Smash to surmount. It was opaque; hecould not see through it at all.

However, a wall of paper could hardly impede an ogre.He readied a good punch.

"Careful!" John cried. "That looks like—"

Smash's fist punched through the wall. The paper sepa-rated readily, but glued itself to his arm.

"Flypaper," the fairy concluded.

Smash tried to pull the sticky stuff off, but it stuck tohis other hand when he touched it. The more he worked at

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it, the more places it adhered to. Soon he was covered with

the stuff.

"Slow down. Smash," Chem said. "I'm sure hot waterwill clean that off. I saw a hotspring a short distanceback."

She took him to the hotspring and washed him off, andit did clean him up. Her hands were efficient yet gentle;

Smash discovered he liked having a female attend to himthis way. But of course he couldn't admit it; he was anogre. "Next time use a stick to poke through that paper,"

the centaur advised.

But when they returned to the wall, they found the oth-ers had already thought of that. They had poked andpeeled a hole big enough for anyone to pass through. "Butthere's one thing," Tandy warned. "There are swarms offlies over there."

So that was what the Ear had warned them of. Theywere going to pass through a region of flies.

That didn't bother Smash; he normally ignored flies.Biythe was also unworried; no fly could sting brass. ButTandy, Chem, Goldy, John, and the Siren were concerned.They didn't want stinging flies raising welts on their prettyskins. "If only we had some repellent," Tandy said. "In thecaves there are some substances that drive them off—"

"Some repellent bushes do grow in these parts," Goldysaid. "Let me look." She scouted about and soon locatedone. "The only problem is, they smell awful." She held outthe leaves she had plucked.

She had not overstated the case. The stench was appall-ing. No wonder the flies stayed clear of it!

They discussed the matter and decided it was better tostink than to suffer too great a detour in their route north.They held their breath and rubbed the foul leaves overtheir bodies. Then, reeking of repellent, they steppedthrough the rent in the flypaper and proceeded north.

There was a sound behind them. Marching along the pa-per wall was a monstrous fly in coveralls, toting a cart. Itstopped at the rent, unrolled a big patch of paper, and set itin place, sealing it over with stickum. Then the flypaperhanger moved on to the east, following the wall.

"We're sealed in," Tandy muttered.

A dense swarm of stingflies spotted them and zoomedin—only to bank off in dismay as the awful odor smote it.Good enough; Smash's nose was already acclimating or get-ting deadened to the smell, which wasn't much worse thanthat of another ogre, after all.

They walked on, watching the flies. There were manyvarieties, and some were beautiful with brightly colored,patterned wings and furry bodies. John became very quiet;

obviously she missed her own patterned wings. There weredeerflies and horseflies and dragonflies, looking likewinged miniatures of their species; the deerflies nibbledblades of grass, the horseflies kicked up their heels as theygalloped, and the dragonflies even jetted small lances offire. At one spot there was music; fiddler flies were play-ing for damselflies to dance. It seemed to be a real fly ball.

This became a pleasant trip, since there seemed to be nodangerous creatures here; the flies had driven them allaway. But then the sky clouded and rain fell. It was a lightfall—but it washed away their repellent. Suddenly theywere in trouble, having failed to take immediate shelter.

The first flies to discover this were sweat-gnats. Soon acloud of them hovered about each person except Biythe,causing everyone to sweat uncomfortably. Smash inhaleddeeply and blew the gnats away, but as soon as the turbu-lence ebbed, they were back worse than ever. Other fliessaw the clouds and, in turn, converged. Some of these wereitchers, causing intolerable itches; others were bleeders,causing blood to flow from painless bites. But the worst, asit turned out, were the fly-bys, because they flew by, ob-served, and carried the news of new prey to all corners ofthe Kingdom of the Flies. After that, the very sky was dark-ened by the mass of the converging swarms. There seemedto be no effective way to fight them, for there were fartoo many to swat or shoo away.

Then the swarms drew off a little, and a pair of shoe-flies marched up. A formation of bowflies sent a fly arrowshooting in the direction Smash's party was supposed to go.It seemed better to obey, rather than fight, for there weresawflies and hammerflies and screwdriverflies that couldbe most awkward to fend off.

They marched, and the swarms paced them, buzzing out

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a tune that sounded like a requiem. Smash had not imag-ined that so many flies existed in Xanth. They coated thetrees, they popped out of myriad holes in the ground, theyformed clouds in the sky that rained droppings.

The party arrived at a palace fashioned of flypapercoated with fly ash. Here, surrounded by a cluster of fawn-ing damselflies, perched the Lord of the Flies—a huge, de-monic figure with multiple-faceted eyes. He was readingthe flyleaf of a book titled The Sting by Wasp.

"Bzzzzzz?" the Fly Lord inquired, looking up with sev-eral facets.

The query seemed to be directed at Smash, but he didnot comprehend fly talk. He grunted noncommittally.

"Bzzzzzz!" the Fly repeated angrily.

Smash had an idea. He lifted the Gap Dragon's Ear tohis own. Maybe that would provide a translation.

All he heard was the roaring and hissing of dragons. Nohelp there.

The Fly buzzed again, angry light glinting from quite anumber of facets. Giant guardflies swarmed up to grab theEar. "Don't fight them, Smash!" Tandy cried, alarmed.

The ogre didn't like it, but realized they could all bebitten and stung to death if he made trouble. It was thecurse of the Eye Queue again, making him react intelli-gently. HeJet the flies take the Ear.

They dragged it to the Fly Lord, who cocked his head inorder to listen to it. And the Ear twitched, almost knockingthe Fly off his perch. "Bzzzzzz!" he buzzed angrily, andthere was a flutter of alarm among the damselflies. Itseemed the Lord had used very strong language. But he gotback up to listen. "Bzzzzzz!" and the guardflies hovered inmilitary readiness. "BZZZZZZ!" and the surroundingswarms retreated.

The Fly Lord angled a few facets at Smash, as if pon-dering a suitable action. Then he buzzed out another com-mand. Instantly the guardflies closed on Smash's partyagain, and the bowflies fired off another arrow pointingthe way.

"I don't know whether the Gap Dragon's Ear has pro-vided us with doom or reprieve," Chem said. "But we'dbetter go along."

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They went along. The arrows pointed them to the east.Soon they arrived at the flypaper wall. At this point asquadron of big spearflies charged, threatening to run ev-ery member of the party through.

They got the message. They all plunged through thewall. They got terribly stuck-up with flypaper, but the flieslet them be. It seemed they had been banished from Fly-land.

They staggered around, looking for another hotspring forwashing. But before they found one, a small flying dragonspied them. It winged rapidly east.

"I fear this is dragon country," the Siren said. "Look atthe dragonclaw marks on the trees."

Smash saw that all the trees were marked, and thescratches were definitely those of dragons. The largest anddeepest scrapes were also the highest; the biggest monstersset the most imposing signatures. "We had better move," hesaid. In his present state he could not adequately protectthis party against a pack of dragons, annoying as it was toadmit that fact even privately.

But they couldn't move very well, tangled in flypaper. Itwas collecting dirt and leaves and stray bugs, making eachmember of the party resemble a harpy dipped in glue.Long before they found a hotspring, they heard the heavytread of the feet of a land dragon.

"You know what?" the Siren said angrily. "The flies of-fered us up to the dragons!"

"And the Ear, too," John cried, spying the Gap Dragon'sEar on the ground.

"That's to frame us," Goldy said. "The dragons willthink we killed one of their number, and they'll reallychomp us."

Smash braced himself. "I'll try to hold them off."

"You haven't yet recovered enough strength," the Sirensaid. "And many big dragons are coming. Don't try tofight." She took the Ear from John and listened to it. Ittwitched in her hand. "Someone's talking about us! Anogre, a centaur, and five nymphs."

"That won't do us much good if the dragons eat us,"Tandy muttered.

"What's it like to be eaten?" Biythe asked. Clothed in

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paper, she looked just like the others, with hardly any ofher metal showing.

"That's right—you have had even less experience in reg-ular Xanth than I have," Tandy said. "But I doubt you'llever be eaten. Your body is brass."

"Well, everything is brass where I come from," Biythereplied. "My pet bird is brass, my sheep is brass, even myass is brass. That's the way it is in the City of Brass. Whatdoes that have to do with being eaten?"

"Monsters don't eat brass here," Tandy explained.

"I can't be eaten?" Biythe asked, sounding disappointed.

"Oh, you could try," John said. "When the first dragoncomes, you could volunteer to be the first eaten. But Ithink you alone among us are secure from that fate."

"I wonder," the brassie said thoughtfully.

Already the first dragon was arriving. It was a hugeeight-legged land rover, snorting smoke. Smash strode for-ward to meet it, knowing it would have been too much forhim even when he had his full strength. It wasn't the drag-on's size so much as its heat; it could roast him long beforehe hurt it. But the dragon would attack regardless ofwhether he fought, and it was an ogre's way to fight.Maybe he could hurl some boulders at it and score a lucky

conk on its noggin.

Then Biythe ran past him, intercepting the dragon. Thedragon exhaled, bathing her in flame, but brief heat couldnot hurt her. She continued right on up to its huge snout."Eat me first, dragon!" she cried.

The dragon did not squat on ceremony. It opened itsmonstrous jaws and took her in in one bite.

And broke half a dozen teeth on her hard metal.

Biythe frowned amidst the smoke and piled fragments ofteeth. "You can do better than that, dragon!" she urged

indignantly.

The dragon tried again—and broke six more teeth."Come on, creature!" Biythe taunted. "Show your mettleon my metal. I've received worse dents just from beingdropped—but I won't say where."

Now several more dragons arrived. They paused, curiousabout the holdup. Another snatched Biythe away, crunch-ing down hard on her body—and it, too, lost six teeth.

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The brass girl was insulted. "Is that all there is to it?What kind of experience is that? Here I visit this great big,soft, slushy, living world at great inconvenience, and youmonsters aren't doing a thing!"

Abashed, the dragons stared at her. She still looked likea clothed flesh person. Finally a third one tried—and lostits quota of teeth.

"If you dumb dragons can't eat one little girl when she'scooperating, what good are you?" Biythe demanded, dis-gusted. She shook tooth fragments off her body, marchedup to one of the largest monsters, and yanked at a whisker."You—eat me or else!"

The dragon exhaled a horrendous belch of flame. Itburned Biythe's remaining flypaper to ashes, but didn'thurt her. Seeing that, the monster backed off, dismayed. Ifa thing couldn't be chomped or scorched, it couldn't behandled.

"You know, I think we have had a stroke of luck," theSiren said. "The dragons naturally assume we are all likethat."

"Luck?" John asked. "Biythe knows what she's doing!She knows she needs us to get her back to her world. She'shelping us get out of a fix."

Smash's Eye Queue operated. "Maybe we can benefitfurther. We need a nice, steady stream of steam to melt offthe flypaper."

"A steam bath," the Siren agreed. "But very gentle."

Biythe tried it. She approached a big steam-turbinedragon. "Bathe me, monster, or I'll make you eat me," shesaid imperiously.

Cowed, the dragon obeyed. It jetted out a wash of richwhite steam and vapor. In a moment the brass girl stoodshining clean, well polished, the fly ash all sogged off.

"Now my friends," Biythe ordered. "A little lower onthe heat; they're tougher than I am and don't need somuch."

She was playing it cool! Nervously the others stood inplace while the dragon sent forth a cooler blast. Smash andthe girls stepped into it. The vapor was as hot as Johncould stand, but since she had already lost her wings, it

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didn't hurt her. The others had no trouble. All the flypaperwas steamed off.Smash also became aware that his .fleas were gone.Now that he thought about it, he realized that he hadn'tbeen scratching since entering the Kingdom of the Flies.Those fly-repellent leaves must have driven off the fleas,

too!

Now a dragon approached with an elf on a leash. "Doany of you freaks speak human?" the elf asked.

Smash exchanged glances with the others. BiytheBrassie had been speaking to these monsters all along, andthey had understood. Didn't this elf know that? Better toplay it stupid. "Me freak, some speak," he said, emulatinghis former ogre mode.

The elf considered him. The little man's expression ran abrief gamut from fear of a monster to contempt for themonster's wit. "What are you doing here with these six

females?"

"Me anticipate girls taste great," Smash said, slurpinghis tongue over his chops.

Again the fearful contempt. "I know ogres eat people.But what are you doing here in Dragonland?"

Smash scratched his hairy head as if confused. "Me crit-icize buzzing flies."

"Oh. They booted you." The elf made crude growls athis dragon, and Smash realized he was translating, much asGrundy the Golem did for the King of Xanth. MaybeBiythe had gotten through to the dragons mainly by force

of personality.

The dragon growled back. "You'll have to check in with

the Dragon Lady."

"Dragon Lady not afraidy?" Smash asked stupidly.The elf sneered. "Of the like of you? Hardly. Come on

now, ignoramus."

Ignoramus? Smash smiled inwardly. Not while he re-mained cursed with the Eye Queue! But he shuffled be-hind the dragon, gesturing the girls to follow.

The Siren fell in beside Smash as they walked. "I'vebeen listening to the Ear," she murmured. "The voice thattalked about us before was the elf's; the Dragon Lady

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knows about us already. Now the Ear is roaring like a ter-rible storm. I don't know what that means."

"Maybe we have to get to that storm," Smash whispered.Then the elf turned, hearing him talk, and the conversationhad to end.

They came to a huge tent fashioned of dragonet. Insidethe net was the Dragon Lady—a scintillatingly regal Queenof her species. She reclined, half supine, in her huge nestof glittering diamonds; whenever she twitched, the precious• stones turned up new facets, like the eyes of the Lord ofthe Flies, reflecting spots of light dazzlingly. She switchedher barbed, blue tail about restlessly, growling, and archedher bright red neck. It was really quite impressive. She hadbeen reading a book of Monster Comics, and seemed nottoo pleased to be interrupted.

"Her Majesty the Illustrious Dragon Lady demands fur-ther information, oaf," the elf said, becoming imperious inthe reflected glory of his mistress.

Oaf, eh? Smash played stupider than ever. "Me slow, noknow," he mumbled.

"Is it true you are impossible to eat?"

Smash held out a gauntleted fist. The Dragon Ladyreached delicately forward with her snout and took a care-ful nip. The metal balked her gold-tinted teeth, and shequickly desisted. She growled.

"If you aren't edible, what use are you. Her Majestywants to know?" the elf demanded.

"What a question!" Tandy cried indignantly. "People-creatures rule Xanth!"

"Dragon-creatures rule Xanth," the elf retorted. "Drag-ons tolerate other creatures only as prey." Nonetheless, theDragon Lady's growl was muted. Smash suspected that shewas not eager to incite a war with the Transformer-King ofthe human folk.

In response to another growl from his mistress, the elfturned again to Smash. "What are we to do with you?" hedemanded.

Smash shrugged. "Me only distrust place where merust." Actually, neither his stainless steel gauntlets norBiythe's brass rusted; water was more likely to cause trou-ble with the fires of the dragons. But he was mindful of

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the Ear's storm-signal; if he could trick the Dragon Ladyinto casting them into the storm, their chances should bebetter than they were here.

"Metal—rust," the elf mused as the Dragon Ladygrowled. "True, our iron-scaled dragons do have a problemin inclement weather." He glanced suspiciously at Smash."I don't suppose you could be fooling us?""Me ghoul, big fool," Smash said amiably."Obviously," the elf agreed with open contempt.So the Dragon Lady ordered the inedible party dumpedinto the Region of Air, since the Region of Water did notborder Dragonland. An abrupt demarcation established theborder; the near side was green turf and trees, the far sidea mass of roiling stormcloud. Smash didn't like this, for heknew the others could not endure as much punishment ashe could. But now they were committed, and it did seembetter than staying among the dragons. They took the pre-caution of roping themselves together with Chem's rope sothat no one would blow away.

They stepped across the line. Instantly they were in theheart of the wind, choking on dust. It was a dust storm, nota rainstorm! The flying sand cut cruelly into their skins.Smash picked up several girls and hunched his gross bodyover them, protecting them somewhat as he staggered for-ward. Then he tripped, for he could not see his own flatfeet in this blinding sand, and fell and rolled, holding him-self rigid so as not to crush the girls.

He fetched up in a valley formed in the lee of a boulder.Chem thumped to a stop beside them. Here the sand by-passed the party, mostly, and it was possible for each per-son to pry open an eye or two. Thanks to the rope, all werepresent, though battered.

"What do we do now?" Tandy asked, frightened.The Siren sat up and put the Ear to her ear. "Nothinghere," she reported. "But maybe the noise of this sand-storm is drowning it out."